


Project Pride

by TheSleepingOwl



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bullying, Coming Out, Gay Peter Parker, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, Past Sexual Abuse, Poor Peter Parker (literally and figuratively), Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22135138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSleepingOwl/pseuds/TheSleepingOwl
Summary: In hindsight, it should have been obvious. The signs were all there, unwittingly scattered by Peter like breadcrumbs for Tony to follow—the way he would fall into uncomfortable silence when the topic of dating came up, or become flustered whenever Tony teased him about the mysterious Michelle-Call-Me-MJ character Peter was constantly gushing about, or deflect Tony’s mostly-joking inquiries into whether or not they needed to be having The Talk with a hurricane of splutters and blushes.And even without the signs, Peter was still his kid. Tony was just supposed to know these things.So when FRIDAY pulled up Peter’s search history—‘how can i make myself not like boys,’ ‘can you force yourself to be attracted to girls,’ ‘how to stop your friends from knowing youre gay,’ and, most devastating, ‘how can i keep my parents from finding out im gay’—Tony wasn’t surprised so much as deeply, unquantifiably ashamed. Because he should have known.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 121
Kudos: 1185
Collections: Peter, underated irondad





	1. Chapter 1

The revelation began to dawn, as Tony’s revelations usually did, with Pepper Potts. 

“Care to share with the class?” she asked one Thursday morning, raising a brow over that day’s copy of _The Times_.

Across the kitchen island, Tony scrolled through his phone as it pinged with a series of incoming texts. He tried to hide his grin behind a sip of coffee, but it was a futile effort. The unabashed glee he felt upon reading Peter’s sheepish messages was no doubt casting an obvious gleam over his face. “Underoos is standing me up. Apparently he can’t come over tonight because he and MJ are catching a movie together.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. Tony had become an expert in her eye rolls long ago. This was the amused, _you’re an idiot but I still think you’re cute_ kind—not to be mistaken with the annoyed _I’m not your personal assistant anymore, I shouldn’t have to deal with this_ , or the livid _I’m three seconds away from grabbing a gauntlet and blasting you through the nearest wall_.

“He goes out to movies with Michelle all the time, Tony.”

“He goes out to movies with Michelle and his other dweeby friends all the time,” he corrected, cheerfulness not in the least bit soured by his fiancé’s clear lack of interest. “It’s never been just the two lovebirds before.”

Pepper frowned. “Tony…”

“They grow up so fast. One day they’re acrobatting through the streets of Queens, rescuing cats from trees and smashing headfirst into pigeons, the next they’re still doing all that, but then they end the whole shebang making dove eyes at their pubescent dates and canoodling in a darkened theater.”

“Tony.”

“I should probably send Happy over to Midtown,” he said, pretending to ponder the idea. “Have him slip some condoms into Pete’s locker just in case.” 

“Tony, you can’t be serious.”

“God knows I don’t want to be one of those new age parents who go for the whole buddy buddy, ‘I was a teen once too’ shtick, but calamity tends to follow that kid around like he’s trending. The last thing we need is for our little Spider-Baby to suddenly have spider-babies of his own.”

The newspaper seemed to lose all draw for Pepper. Her attention remained focused on him as she folded it up and set it aside. “There’s a lot you’d be justified in losing sleep over when it comes to Peter, but I don’t think accidental pregnancies will ever make the list.”

“No harm in being cautious. This isn’t the face of a grandpa, Pep,” he said, waving at himself as evidence of youth. 

“Tony,” she said slowly. “I’m telling you that Peter’s _not_ going to get anyone pregnant. You really haven’t figured it out?”

His lighthearted mood dimmed at her concerned expression. “Figured what out?” he asked, suddenly self-conscious. 

She grimaced. “Maybe you should talk to Peter, honey.”

* * *

Their conversation lingered in the far corners of Tony’s mind for several weeks, occasionally brought to the forefront during quiet moments in the lab with Peter—the kid hunched over a pair of web-shooters at his workbench, Tony fine-tuning the newest StarkPhone model at his—but nothing ever came of it.

Nothing, that was, until FRIDAY alerted him to a breach in the Tattletale Protocol.

“Boss,” she said, “my systems have flagged some concerning internet searches made twenty minutes ago on Mini Man’s laptop I believe you’d want to be made aware of.” 

“Don’t tell me he’s been WebMDing how to treat electrical burns from home again,” he said, exasperated, “because I swear to God FRI, if he crashed into yet another digital billboard, his ass is getting benched for a year.”

In hindsight, it should have been obvious. The signs were all there, unwittingly scattered by Peter like breadcrumbs for Tony to follow—the way he would fall into uncomfortable silence when the topic of dating came up, or become flustered whenever Tony teased him about the mysterious Michelle-Call-Me-MJ character Peter was constantly gushing about, or deflect Tony’s mostly-joking inquiries into whether or not they needed to be having The Talk with a hurricane of splutters and blushes.

And even without the signs, Peter was still his kid. Tony was just supposed to know these things. 

So when FRIDAY pulled up Peter’s search history—‘how can i make myself not like boys,’ ‘can you force yourself to be attracted to girls,’ ‘how to stop your friends from knowing youre gay,’ and, most devastating, ‘how can i keep my parents from finding out im gay’—Tony wasn’t surprised so much as deeply, unquantifiably ashamed. Because he should have known.

* * *

Tony never meant to get so involved. He’d had eyes on the scrawny vigilante known as Spider-Man since the very first month he donned that atrocious red and blue onesie, but Spidey was harmless enough by Tony’s estimation—just another punk who’d parkoured his way to marginal YouTube fame overnight. This belief was cemented when he pinned the identity behind that godawful coke-bottle-lensed mask: a baby-faced fourteen year old who was able to attend one of the most prestigious high schools in New York purely on the merits that landed him a full-ride scholarship, free lunches included. When Tony started working on a new suit for him, it was with the understanding that he wouldn’t hand it over to the Parker kid until his eighteenth birthday. Until then, Tony had every intention of keeping watch from a safe distance. Parker had dealt with enough in his very short life, Tony thought with a pang as he read up on the kid’s tragic backstory. The last thing he needed was for Iron Man to butt in and upend his world yet again.

Cap and his merry band of misfits threw a wrench in that plan.

The decision to recruit Spidey was fueled by desperation. Looking back, Tony acknowledged that it was, to put it lightly, a dick move—lying to Hot Aunt May’s face so he could get her underage nephew to play defense with the big boys in a league he wasn’t ready for. Tony recognized that much as soon as fighting broke out. Parker never should have been at the airport, and that was on him.

His attempts to backtrack when they got home centered around reverting to the original strategy of distance. Tony, after all, wasn’t mentor material. How could he be, when he’d been tainted so thoroughly by Howard’s version of parenthood? The best he could do for Parker was radio silence, with Happy there to intervene as necessary. 

And if Tony occasionally asked FRIDAY to hack Happy’s phone so he could play the kid’s messages on repeat as he tinkered, grinning despite himself as he listened to the sunshine voice spit one rapid-fire stolen bike or churro lady story after another—well, nobody ever need know.

The Toomes fiasco forced him to reevaluate. Distance only ended in disaster, Tony reflected as he stared at Happy’s text. The man had taken one look at the Coney Island wreckage and tracked Peter down, dragging him to the tower where they met a Stark Industries doctor from Biochemical R&D who’d been wrapped in enough NDAs to open her own small papier-mâché business. Peter whined through the entire ordeal, according to Happy, but was eventually swayed into submitting to an exam. Significant abrasions and bruising across his body, Happy reported. First and second degree burns on his arms and hands, two deep gouges in his shoulder reminiscent of stab wounds, and four broken ribs. No internal bleeding thank God, but the phrase “close call” echoed in Tony’s mind through the night like an accusation. This wasn’t working.

Happy began to pick Peter up from school every other Friday, driving him to the Compound where Tony would spend the afternoon showing him how to fix a combustion chamber or giving him crash courses in nanotech engineering. Bimonthly lab sessions became weekly, which became entire weekends that Peter would stay over. Voicemails left to Happy became occasional calls to Tony, then daily check-ins, then a constant stream of back and forth texts that would keep Tony preoccupied during previously insufferable board meetings full of stuffy businessmen and black-tie galas full of pompous assholes. 

It made him feel wanted, he realized at some point along the line. The lab days and phone calls and weekend sleepovers. Needed in a way no one ever needed him before. Not as an inventor, or a benefactor, or even as a superhero. Just as Mr. Stark. It was, Tony could admit (if only to himself), kind of nice.

Their new routine was disrupted when Peter inadvertently let the cat out of the bag to his aunt. She was rightfully pissed—pissed enough to cut off Peter’s contact with Tony for two weeks. Pepper and Rhodey both threatened murder more than once within that timeframe, but to be fair, Tony was miserable company. Webhead Withdrawal was his self-diagnosis. Entirely without Tony’s permission, the kid had taken his Bambi eyes and Golden Retriever enthusiasm and pure fucking _goodness_ and bulldozed his way straight through Tony’s universe until he reached the man’s heart and decided to shanghai the damn thing.

It was terrible, Tony sulked during the fourteen day exile. Horrendous. In the space of three months, Peter Benjamin Parker had managed to knock down every last one of Tony’s carefully erected barriers like they were bowling pins, and the worst part was he hadn’t even known that he’d done it.

When May finally lifted her ban (following a probationary period and an hour of screaming into Tony’s face about minors and guardianship and underhanded billionaires with egos so big it was a surprise planets didn’t orbit around them who thought their pocketbooks made them immune to even the most basic accountability), Tony was embarrassed by the fervor with which he latched onto Peter’s renewed presence in his life. 

But hell, he’d missed it—the 3 a.m. texts asking for help with physics homework, the eager bouncing whenever he let Peter work on an Iron Man suit with him, the way Peter would stutter in the presence of the eminent Pepper Potts. He’d missed all of it. And so what if visits to the Compound morphed into visits to Tony’s SoHo penthouse? So what if the guestroom turned into Peter’s room? So what if Rhodey’s barbs about Tony being a dad started to feel less alarming as time went on? So what if _the_ kid was now interchangeable with _his_ kid? 

Because for all Tony’s plans to stay distant and aloof, Peter had undeniably become his kid.

Tony scoffed. His kid, yet for the past year he’d been stumbling blind. Relentless as he ribbed the hero-in-training about how he should _get a girlfriend already, Pete, geez. Every Superman needs his Lois Lane_. Tony couldn’t remember ever feeling like a bigger jackass.

The shame of discovering he’d been unaware of such a fundamental part of Peter—of realizing he must have done something to make Peter feel that he had to actively hide this part of himself from Tony, that Tony wasn’t safe—was quickly followed by panic. Aside from dumb luck, Tony only avoided butchering their relationship up to this point by imagining what Howard might do in his shoes and doing the 180 opposite. Maybe it wasn’t the most reliable tactic, but it got the job done.

But this? This was foreign territory. There were a million landmines he could step on at any second—a million ways to fuck everything up. The Howard Stark Inversion Method wasn’t going to cut it for a situation this delicate.

“New project FRI,” Tony said, shooing Dum-E away. He needed to concentrate. “I want everything you’ve got on raising a gay child.”

“That’s quite the query, Boss.”

He swiped his hand through the air, drawing up a fresh holographic interface. “Limit it to teenagers. Fifteen’s our sweet spot.”

“Beginning a preliminary search now. What name am I storing files under?”

Tony swiveled around in his chair. “‘Pride’ has a nice ring to it.”

* * *

“How was practice?” Tony asked as Peter climbed into the Bugatti’s passenger seat. His backpack hit the floor with a heavy thump.  
  
“Okay.” Peter waved farewell to the other Decathlon members loitering outside the school. A few were staring at Tony, eyes wide and mouths agape, but for most of them, the awe of seeing him pick up their classmate for his supposed internship tapered down after the first several months. Ned, whom Tony had met a couple times in passing, waved frenziedly back, looking as if he might collapse from excitement at any moment. A curly-haired girl in combat boots who was brooding off to the side offered her middle finger. 

“Just okay?” Tony flashed Ned a media wink as he pulled away from the curb. The boy was still jumping around and fist-pumping the air in the rearview mirror when Tony rounded the corner and drove out of sight.

“Good,” Peter amended. He popped open the glove compartment and rummaged around for one of the snacks Tony made sure to always keep stocked for the Spider-Baby extraordinaire and his bottomless stomach. “MJ’s running us pretty ragged though.” Peter shoveled a handful of gummy worms into his mouth. “She says we’ve got a strong chance of making it to nationals again next year—”

“Well if the Great and Powerful MJ says so…”

“—as long as we go hard with training the rest of this season.” 

“Chew, Pete! Lordy.”

“There’s no way she’d ever admit it, but I think she’s kind of nervous about trying to live up to Liz.”

Tony hummed in faux contemplation. “Liz was the previous team captain, right?”

“Yeah.”

“This the same Liz whose dad tried to kill you because you took her to the homecoming dance?” He tried to keep his tone balanced somewhere between interest and nonchalance.

The frown Peter aimed at him was one of stern disapproval. Tony thought it was adorable. “He didn’t try to kill me because I took his daughter to homecoming, Mr. Stark. He tried to kill me because I wouldn’t let him steal your plane.”

“And we’re all very grateful for it,” Tony agreed with a diplomatic nod.

A familiar, comfortable silence fell over them, cushioned by the engine’s smooth purr. 

Tony watched Peter in his periphery, deliberating. Based on the knowledge he accumulated during the last 24 hours of frantic research, pediatric psychologists were in unanimous agreement: parents should let their children come out in their own time and in their own way. If they’re pushed before they’re ready, kids might feel embarrassed, or attacked, or try to force themselves even deeper into the closet. Tony was supposed to be supportive, but let Peter take the reins.

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out between you two,” he settled on after several moments. A test step. Toeing the land for mines without putting any real weight forward to set one off.

Peter made a questioning noise through his gummy-puffed chipmunk cheeks.

“You and Liz,” Tony clarified. 

His swallow seemed loud against the quiet of the car. “It’s okay,” he said. “It wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway.”

Tony kept his eyes focused on the road. “What makes you say that, bud?”  
  
Peter deflated, shoulders drooping. “We just weren’t a good fit.”

The car fell silent once more.  
  
“How do you feel about Chinese tonight?” Tony asked when they hit a red light, trying to shake the sensation that he’d failed his kid yet again.

* * *

“Awesome,” Peter breathed, staring at his new camera in open admiration. “Thanks Mr. Stark!”

“You can thank me by not trying to take selfies while you’re thwipping around high-rises and dropping it,” Tony quipped back. “I’ve seen the state of your poor phone. The NYPD oughta charge you with reckless endangerment.”

Making the camera had been a spur of the moment thing. Tony had known for a while that the kid was into photography—a hobby that he and May were both zealous to encourage seeing as, compared to his other favorite pastimes, it had a very small chance of resulting in Peter lying on a gurney in Medical with a stab wound spurting blood from his side. To Pepper’s delight and Peter’s humiliation, Tony was even in the habit of printing off shots Peter posted to the secret Instagram account Tony unearthed following an exhaustive search (“@thirsty_thor_fanboi2001? Seriously Pete?” Tony should have known there and then.) and displaying them on the penthouse fridge. It wasn’t until his most recent visit to the Parkers’ apartment though that he’d seen Peter’s camera—if the bulky chunk of warped plastic Peter rescued from a dumpster could even be called that. Tony did his best to seem impressed as Peter showed off its 96 picture storage capacity, but internally, he was offended by its mere presence. No kid of Tony Stark’s was going to use a _1995 Casio_.

He couldn’t _buy_ a new one though. Pete had a thing about Tony spending money on him—something Tony discovered when he forcibly dragged him to the nearest decent clothing store one time back in October. (He only wanted to make sure the kid had a warm enough coat, as opposed to the dubiously stained, threadbare jacket he’d been wearing as he climbed into the car after school that day, but the guilt he felt when Peter started crying over a price tag in the middle of Brunello Cucinelli was crushing. The tears didn’t ebb until they were standing in front of a Target discount rack, and even then, Peter continued to protest as they waited in the first checkout line of Tony’s life.) 

Making a camera was the next best bet. Peter didn’t have the same qualms about homemade gifts, though that was likely because he was unaware of their value. Tony suspected he’d have a heart attack if he knew the camera in his hands was worth tens of thousands, but what the kid didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“I’ll be careful,” Peter promised. “Thanks again, Mr. Stark. You really didn’t have to.”

Tony hesitated. “You know you can always come to me, right? For stuff like this.”

“I know. You’re like, the best with tech stuff.”

Tony huffed in amusement, then sobered. “I don’t mean tech stuff specifically. You stuff in general.”

Peter appeared to only be half-listening. Most of his attention was focused on playing with the shutter settings. “Me stuff?”

“Peter stuff,” Tony agreed. “Spidey’s great and all—heck, I love the guy, favorite superhero by a landslide, ten out of ten, chef’s kiss, heart eye emojis all around—”

Peter gave a surprised laugh, finally looking up. “Mr. Stark…”

“—but Peter’s important too. Even more than his alter-ego. So if you ever need help with things like phones, or you want someone to talk to about photography, or the Mets, or your eternal love for Mr. Delmar’s cat Mitch—”

“Murph."

“—Smurf, or even bigger stuff than that, then I’m your guy. Capisce?”

“Capisce,” Peter said, hugging the camera close to his chest.

Tony felt something melt inside him at the shy, pleased smile dimpling the kid’s face. 

Good grief.

* * *

When Tony walked out of the ensuite, wiping a smudge of toothpaste from his lips, it was to find Pepper standing next to their bed, an incredulous expression on her face, the copy of _Cosmopolitan_ he’d ordered dangling between her thumb and index. To his dismay, it was still opened on the article he’d begun earlier.

Pepper turned to stare at him. 

He froze for a beat, brain short-circuiting at being caught, before forcing himself to recover. It wasn’t as though he was doing anything _wrong_. 

“You’re home early,” he said, shoving his fists into the pockets of his sweatpants so he wouldn’t tear the magazine from her hands without thinking.

Her eyebrows were almost at her hairline. “Tony.”

“Meeting go alright?”

“ _Tony_.”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“What—”

“But may I just point out that you’re the one who’s always telling me—”

“—the hell—”

“—I need to work on my self-care.”

“—is this?”

“Which is exactly what these kinds of trash publications are supposedly—”

“Going behind my back so you can try to convince me we should—”

“It’s not for us, alright?” Tony said sharply. He moved forward and grabbed the magazine out of her limp fingers, yanking the cover back into place and rolling it up with hasty movements. His face was flaming, his pulse rapid, but he wasn’t sure if it was from mortification or frustration. He slapped the paper tube against his palm, catching it in a tight grip, and heaved a large breath. “It’s not for us.”

“What reason could you _possibly_ have to be reading about _anal sex_ if not…” 

He could see the moment it clicked into place. His teeth ground together.

“Oh.” Her angry confusion bled away, replaced with something so tender that he had to look down.

He tracked the sound of Pepper’s hesitant steps as she walked across the carpet. Her feet came into his line of sight a moment later. 

“This is about Peter,” she said quietly.

Tony’s shrug was tense. “I don’t know anything about this, Pep.” He lifted the rolled magazine for a second, before letting it fall to the floor. Legs suddenly numb, he slumped down onto the edge of the bed and clutched his left wrist in his lap. “I barely know how normal—how _straight_ ,” he corrected himself with a flinch, “relationships work. Up until us, it was all one-night stands with whatever willing woman in a skimpy dress was closest. And yeah, it was fun—Christ, I sound like an asshole.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I _was_ an asshole. Maybe I still am. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a good time. It was fun for what it was. 

“But then this,” he said, gesturing between them, “happened. And I realized how empty the rest of it had always been. How I knew fuck all about being in a real relationship.

“And now Pete… I’m out of my depth on this one. I want…I want to be able to be there for him. I’m his…” Tony floundered. “Person. I’m his person. I’m the guy whose job it is to make sure he’s healthy, and happy, and to have the answers for whatever questions he comes to me with, but I feel like I’m treading water in the deep end here. This isn’t helping him study for a Spanish quiz, or patching him up when he gets in over his head as Spidey, or slipping a couple fives into his backpack when he’s not paying attention. This is…”

Pepper came to stand in front of him. He didn’t resist as she pulled him forward, pressing his forehead against her chest. 

“I don’t know how to be there for him on this,” he mumbled at last. 

She stroked her fingers through the hair behind his ear. “I think you might be making this into a bigger deal than it is, sweetheart.”

“I’ve made jokes,” he confessed. It was something that had been making his gut churn with guilt since the moment he saw Peter’s searches. When he opened a report FRIDAY downloaded for Project Pride and read the statistics—67 percent of the LGBT teens surveyed said their family members had made homophobic comments, 77 percent that they struggled with depression—Tony wondered if he had food poisoning, the nausea had been so overwhelming. “That stupid line to Rhodey about spring break, 1987? I’ve told that in front of Peter. I told it _to_ Peter.”

“You didn’t know, Tony.”

“That’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have been saying it to begin with.”

“No,” Pepper agreed, “you shouldn’t have. But it’s not the end of the world. Peter knows you love him.”

“Does he? He obviously doesn’t think it’s safe to come out to me. With all the shitty things I’ve said, I can’t blame him.”

“Based on what I’ve heard, it sounds like he’s not even fully ready to come out to himself,” Pepper countered. She cupped his chin, forcing him to meet her gentle gaze. “We just need to give him space to figure things out.”

“You don’t get it,” Tony said, voice tinged with desperation. “He shouldn’t be dealing with this on his own. You didn’t see the kind of shit he was Googling. Jesus, Pep. ‘How can I force myself to stop liking boys?’ And after everything that happened with that fucking _monster_ Westcott…”

Even thinking the name turned his blood into lava. The court documents had been sealed because of Peter’s age, but the security was impervious as wet paper when pitted against a Stark. When he hacked into the files back in those first days of researching Peter Parker, he’d done so with barely a twinge of remorse. After all, he was a stranger to Tony at the time, and a potentially dangerous one at that. Tony needed to sleuth out the kid’s sticking points, any personal resentments that might prevent him from keeping a level head on the field, for when Tony eventually did approach him about teaming up with the Avengers. It was Tony’s responsibility to learn everything he could about Spider-Man.

The justification for so excessively invading Peter’s privacy lost steam once he met the kid. Peter wasn’t the type to go rogue, or lose his cool in a fit of anger. Peter didn’t hold grudges, even against scum of the earth pedophiles like his former babysitter. Peter was going to be the best of them all. He already was.

Because Tony was a spineless coward, he didn’t bring it up until his hand was forced. Peter had been staying overnight at the Compound when Tony was jolted awake by his screams. The duvet was tangled around Peter’s limbs when Tony ran into the room, his violent thrashing only serving to ensnare him further, and even in sleep, Peter was gasping for air through an onslaught of tears, begging to be let go. 

Peter went fuchsia when he woke to find Tony hovering over him, bed sticky and damp beneath his legs. The look of horrified humiliation remained frozen in place no matter how many times Tony waved away the stammered apologies, trying to assure him that it was a completely natural reaction, nothing to be embarrassed about. Heck, this was peanuts compared to the time Tony got drunk at his birthday party and pissed in his suit as entertainment for a roomful of people. 

While Peter showered, Tony changed the sheets and tried not to think about how common it was for children who had been sexually abused to regress to bedwetting.

Peter’s shame was still palpable as Tony ushered him into the kitchen for a cup of hot cocoa. It was painful to witness, and after the hundredth meek _I really am sorry, Mr. Stark_ , Tony couldn’t bear it any longer. He let the truth flood forth—how he had looked into Peter’s history, and hacked the court records, and knew everything that happened with Steven Westcott. Peter cut him off as he began to stumble his way through an apology for violating Peter’s trust so monumentally.

“It’s okay, Mr. Stark,” Peter had said in a voice that was very, very tired. “I understand.”

“He deserves better than me,” Tony told Pepper now. “He deserves someone who actually knows what they’re doing.”

Pepper gave his chin a light squeeze. “I’m pretty sure that one’s up to Peter to decide.”

* * *

“How was practice?” Tony asked as Peter climbed into the Audi, backpack tumbling to the floor with a thump.

“Good.” Peter dug through the glove compartment, making a triumphant noise upon finding a bag of Doritos. “We got a new kid who’s gonna serve as alternate behind Flash.”  
  
Tony sighed. “Chew, Pete.”

“He’s really good.”

Tony glanced at Peter from the corner of his eye. “Yeah? What’s his name?”

“Charlie,” Peter said, not fully able to tamp down his smile. “Charlie Weiderman.”

Tony hummed. He made a mental note to have FRIDAY run a quick background check later, pointedly ignoring his stream of consciousness as it nagged him about being a helicopter parent. It sounded suspiciously like Aunt May.

“How do you feel about Italian tonight?”

* * *

“Hey Pep,” he said, thumbing to the next page of _Out_ , “what’s a swish?”

“Tony,” she groaned. Her back was to him a moment later, pillow clutched over her head. “Go to sleep.”

* * *

Time, as it was wont to do, marched forward. Tony grew. Peter flourished. Things began to feel less daunting.

And then a landmine, as they were wont to do, exploded in Tony’s face.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains depictions of violence and homophobia, including the physical assault of a gay person and the use of a slur

Tony was probing around the hollow abdomen of Mark 47, halfway through replacing a faulty wire, when the refrain of “Paradise City” sank to a muted hum. His eyes flicked up from the suit—spread out on the workbench like an autopsy patient, the metal plackart retracted to reveal the empty shell inside—towards the ceiling. 

“Incoming call from Mini Man, Boss,” FRIDAY explained.

He glanced over at the holographic display suspended midair to his left. In the far corner, beneath an anatomical chart of 47’s torso, the clock read 10:02. Curfew check-in.

“Thank you dear. Speaker please.”

“Hi Mr. Stark!”

A wide, involuntary grin stretched across Tony’s face before he could even blink.   
  
Good grief.

“Hey Underoos,” Tony said. “You make it home in one piece? No stab wounds? Gunshots? Gastrointestinal distresses? I don’t need to come bust you out of a dank dungeon lair, do I? Because I’m already in my bathrobe and slippers, watching reruns of _The Golden Girls_ and sipping mimosas from a tiny straw. Much as I enjoy rescuing you kiddo, having to get dressed again would really put a damper on my evening.”  
  
“I didn’t get kidnapped, Mr. Stark. I got off patrol hours ago.” He could practically hear the kid’s eye roll. “I told you I’d be meeting some friends tonight. We’ve got that calc test on Friday.”

“This is New York, Pete,” Tony said, readjusting his safety glasses with a shoulder. “Patrol or not, kidnappings are always a valid concern. Heck, for all I know, one of those snotty sophomores in that study buddy group of yours is a criminal mastermind. That Guy-in-the-Chair what’s-his-face Fred kid is suspiciously adept at hacking my tech.”

“I know you know his name is Ned.”

“I’m just not sure how I feel about you spending so much time at his place.”

“And he only hacked it once,” Peter continued.

“The whole friendship gig could be a ruse to lure you in, you know.” Tony pulled his hands from the suit’s gaping core. “One of these days you’ll probably walk through the door and be swept up into a giant net, and guess whose job it’ll be to drag my ass down there so I can clean up after you.”

“We didn’t even meet at Ned’s house, Mr. Stark. We met at Charlie’s.”

Tony straightened. “Yeah? You been hanging out a lot with this Charlie guy?” He hoped it sounded indifferent. 

“Yeah,” Peter said. “He seems kind of lonely.” The playfulness of their banter seeped away into something more serious. “I don’t think he has many friends.” He paused a beat before confiding, “People at school sometimes bully him.”

A tiny, infinitesimal part of Tony felt bad for the Weiderman kid. The much larger, more resentful part of him wondered what the reason was for his unpopularity. A clean background check guaranteed nothing, after all. There was so much room for error.

“You know Pete,” Tony began in a gentle voice, “I get that helping out the little guy is kind of your thing. And that’s amazing, bud. I love that about you. But you shouldn’t feel like it’s your responsibility to be friends with someone just because they look lonely. You don’t have to spend time with this guy if he rubs you the wrong way or anything.”

Peter swam around the bait like a bottlenose dolphin. “It’s okay, Mr. Stark. I don’t mind.”

“It’s just that you’ve got a big heart,” Tony pressed. “A really big heart. Bigger than the Empire State. And sometimes I worry about people taking advantage of that.”

“They won’t,” Peter said. “I like Charlie. He’s really smart. You should hear him at practice. He’s like, a freaking whiz at chemistry.”

Tony sniffed and muttered, “Well hurray for Charlie.”

“Did you know that the element symbol for iron comes from the Latin word ‘ferrum’? Charlie told me that the other day.” 

The soldering gun hit the workbench with more force than was strictly necessary. “Kid,” Tony said, “everyone and their pet Schnauzer knows that.”

“I bet you didn’t,” Peter said brightly.

“I am literally Iron Man.”

“The suits aren’t actually made of iron, Mr. Stark,” Peter pointed out. 

The sass on this kid. Unbelievable. 

“They’re a titanium alloy. It wouldn’t be plausible to use something as dense as iron as the primary building material for an airborne machine. I mean, 4.5 grams per cubic centimeter compared to 7.8 is—”

“Alright, young buck,” Tony said, “let’s tone down the cheek. Lordy, I miss the days when you were too nervous to string two sentences together in my presence. Everything was so peaceful back then. I could actually breathe without some Spider-Infant cavorting in and tormenting me with useless trivia about how lungs collect oxygen via respiration and CO2 in the bloodstream yada yada etcetera etcetera and so forth.”

Peter laughed. “You’re so extra, Mr. Stark.” 

Tony’s face scrunched up. He hated when Peter spoke Gen Z—it made him feel like he was standing on the curb outside a house party he hadn’t been invited to, listening to everyone having fun inside without him. “I don’t even know what that means. Is extra good or bad?”  
  
“In this case?” Peter said, resonant with affection. “It’s good. The best.” 

Tony sniffed again. This kid. “Well then.”  
  
“Did you know that titanium dioxide is sometimes used to make cake icing whiter?” Peter asked. “Charlie told me that, too.”

Tony fought the urge to bang his head against the workbench.

* * *

“I don’t like him,” Tony said, stomping into the living area the moment his call with Peter ended.

Pepper didn’t even glance up from her book. “Who?”

“Weiderman.” He began to pace back and forth in front of where she sat on the sectional, fingers clutching his hips. “The little asshole Pete’s got a crush on.”

That caught Pepper’s attention. Tony felt a surge of annoyance at the hint of a smile on her lips as she looked at him, marking her spot on the page with her index. “Weiderman? What’s his first name?”

“Charlie,” he grit out. He did his best to make it sound like a profanity.

Pepper’s smile grew. “Peter and Charlie.” Hearing the names paired together in such a dreamy tone made Tony want to punch something. “That’s so cute.”  
  
“It’s not _cute_ ,” he spat, spinning mid-stride to glare at her. “It’s _abhorrent_.” 

His disdain didn’t even make Pepper blink. She closed her book and set it on the coffee table, then began scrolling through her phone.

“What are you doing?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Finding Charlie’s Facebook.”

“Stop it.”

She shooed a hand in his direction as though he were a particularly irritating housefly. A short, excited squeal spurted from her mouth a minute later. “He looks adorable!”

“He looks like a sleaze-ball who’s not even worth the dirt on Pete’s shoes. Our kid’s a million light-years out of this creep’s league.”

“Aw,” Pepper said, turning the phone so he could see the screen and shoving it towards him. “There’s a picture of them together at Decathlon.”

He staggered back like she was waving a hot fireplace poker in his face. “Would you cut it out?! This isn’t funny, Pepper.” 

She shrugged, unfazed, then went back to flipping through Weiderman’s pictures. “You’re being ridiculous, Tony.” 

“I am not,” he said, peeved by how blasé she was being about this entire catastrophic state of affairs. 

“How do you know Charlie’s even interested in boys?”

Tony returned to his furious pacing without a reply.

“Have you even met him?”

“I don’t need to _meet_ him to know he’s not anywhere near good enough for Peter.” Peter was amazing. Incredible. Caring and loyal and intelligent and funny and brave and empathetic. What the fuck could Weiderman offer that would come anywhere close to Pete? “I swear, if that pompous, smooth-talking, Arnold Poindexter prick even thinks about looking at my kid the wrong way, I’ll have him polishing the tiles of his Raft cell with his own toothbrush before nightfall.”

Pepper was still focused on her phone. “I thought you’d be happy if Peter got a boyfriend. Isn’t that part of your pride plot?”  
  
“ _Project Pride_ ,” Tony said with another glare, “is a _strategic plan_ to gain expertise in raising a currently-closeted gay teen who’s obviously struggling with internalized homophobia and implementing that knowledge so I can better support him.” 

“Did you rehearse that?”

“It has nothing to do with wanting Peter to get a boyfriend.”

“‘Implementing that knowledge,’” Pepper repeated. “I suppose that includes the stunt you pulled during last week’s press conference?” The question was laden with sarcasm.

The conference itself was to announce the upcoming expansion of Stark Industries’ bioengineering department—a field Tony had become increasingly invested in ever since the battle in Germany that left Rhodey paralyzed. Everything was going smoothly until a reporter asked him to respond to the statement Focus on the Family had released a few days prior, denigrating his recent fifty million dollar donation to The Trevor Project. (Another step in his strategic plan. Tony’s public support of queer-positive organizations was supposed to help foster a comfortable environment for Peter.) He spent several minutes vociferously bashing the group before pledging four percent of Bioengineering’s annual revenue to HIV/AIDS research. Needless to say, neither Pepper nor SI’s chief financial officer had been pleased.   
  
“The reporter asked me a question, Pep. I responded. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Not make spontaneous decisions about how my company is going to allocate billions of dollars,” Pepper said, looking up from her phone to glower at him. “That’s what you were supposed to do.”

“My company. I own it. I even put my name on it so none of my coworkers would steal it out of the office fridge.”

“Well _I_ run it,” Pepper said. “Because _you_ asked me to. And I’d appreciate if you could keep this whole scheme of yours out of the way so I can do my job.”

“Project Pride isn’t a scheme,” he said, offended. “It’s a _strategic plan_. One that’s got nothing to do with Peter getting a boyfriend, in case you missed that earlier.”

“Well forgive my confusion,” she said in a way that made it clear she wasn’t actually seeking forgiveness. “How could I have ever thought this project has anything to do with Peter dating? The articles you keep reading about PrEP and safe dilation methods should have clued me in.”

Tony stopped his pacing and fixed her with an unamused stare. “You promised you wouldn’t make fun of me for that. You know the sex ed in this country is deplorable at the best of times, never mind for kids who don’t fit some nonsensical cookie cutter shape. And wanting Peter to be able to come to me with questions, especially considering his history, doesn’t mean I want him dating a—”

“I don’t suppose Peter’s aunt knows anything about this,” Pepper cut in, tossing her phone onto the cushion beside her. “Or did you forget that he does, in fact, have a literal, legal guardian?”

Tony crossed his arms, bracing himself for a confrontation. “No,” he said dangerously. “And if you’re seriously suggesting we tell her about Peter, who, for reasons I’m still working to get to the bottom of, is terrified of anyone ever…” 

His voice faded, a wave of guilt washing over him at the evident hurt on Pepper’s face.

“I wasn’t going to suggest outing him, Tony,” she said, quiet. “I’d never do that.”

He grabbed his left wrist, shoulders slumping. “I know you wouldn’t, Pep. I’m sorry. I just… I know you wouldn’t.”

She watched him for a long moment. “Sweetheart. I know how much you love Peter. And I know how important it is for you to be there for him. But Tony,” she said, “you need to remember that there are boundaries.”

He tensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not his dad, sweetheart,” Pepper said. The tangible compassion in her voice did nothing to take the sting from her words.

“Yeah. Well.” His throat was tight, making the attempt at apathy fall miserably short. “I know I’m not exactly Atticus Finch over here. You don’t need to point that out.”

“Tony…”

“But until Hot Aunt May gets a new beau Pete can drop me like a hot potato for—”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“—he’s gonna have to grin and bear the mess that is me a while longer, because I’m the closest thing he’s got at the moment.”

Pepper sighed. “I know he’s your kid in every way that matters. I’m only trying to say he’s not _legally_ yours. And even if he were, being this overprotective isn’t healthy. For either of you.”

“I’m not being overprotective. I’m being just the right amount of protective.”

“You’re infantilizing him because he’s gay,” she countered. “You realize that, right? You’re acting like he somehow lost the ability to look after himself overnight now that you know any future relationships he might have will be with boys instead of girls.”

He narrowed his eyes at the accusation. “That’s insulting.”

“Yes, it is insulting for you to think Peter’s sexuality is somehow a disability.”

“It’s insulting,” he said, “for you to insinuate that I’d ever think any less of Peter. Least of all for this.”

Pepper looked frustrated. “You’ve said more than once that you feel terrible for pestering him about finding a girlfriend. You were _excited_ by the idea of him dating. Why does the knowledge he likes boys suddenly change things? Why did you believe Michelle was practically a match made in heaven, but now you’re making Charlie out to be some sort of crazed supervillain who’s going to…what? Corrupt Peter? Whisk him away in the dead of night? Lock him in a high tower? You’ve never met either of them. How is it any different?”

Tony blinked, grappling to find the error in her observations, the flaw in her reasoning. An uncomfortable sensation began to trickle down his spine.

He hadn’t _meant_ to treat Peter differently. Tony still saw him as the same person. The same responsible kid—who still fucked up plenty, sure, but who was nonetheless absurdly mature for his age. The same hero who’d proven to Tony time and again that he could hold his own, even if he was still learning the ropes. He was still _Peter_. What had shifted?

“It just is,” he said, painfully aware of how pathetic the defense was.

Pepper’s expression was pitying. “I get that this is an adjustment for you,” she said, “and I know you only want to protect Peter. And yes, he’s your kid. But he’s not a baby. He’s as capable of taking care of himself now as he was before. That includes making decisions about who he does or doesn’t want to date.”

Tony’s rigid posture began to wilt. “I just don’t want him to get hurt,” he said finally, hating the insecurity in his voice.  
  
“Sometimes you have to let kids get hurt, sweetheart,” Pepper said, picking up her book. “Sometimes that’s what needs to happen for them to grow.”

If only he knew what a portent her words would turn out to be.

* * *

The halls of Midtown High were empty as Tony strode through them—unsurprising, considering it was early afternoon and students were now tucked away in their classrooms post-lunch, no doubt napping off full stomachs as their underpaid teachers rambled equations to a whiteboard. 

Except one student, his mind supplied. One student wasn’t among them. The one student who mattered. 

Tony quickened his pace. 

The call had come during a Stark Relief charity luncheon. He’d been floating around, pretending to listen as wealthy donors who made contributions with the sole purpose of flaunting their generosity to the press talked at him. The event was, overall, as atrocious as such events usually were. The only reason he avoided ripping his hair out in boredom was because Happy had accompanied him (by order of Pepper, who knew Tony well enough by now to realize he would play hooky without a chaperone). Between donors, Tony managed to amuse himself by tossing olives and cubed cheddar at the man’s head whenever his back was turned.

Happy was spinning around to scowl at him yet again when Tony felt the vibration against his chest. He excused himself from whatever mind-numbing conversation he was caught in and slipped from the room, Happy at his heels, before fishing his phone from the Tom Ford’s inner pocket.

Yes, he assured Peter’s principal, it really was Tony Stark. Was Peter okay? No, it wasn’t a hoax. Was Peter okay? Didn’t the school know about Peter’s internship? There were other students who could vouch for him if necessary. Edward Leeds had met Tony in person. _Was Peter okay?_ Shit. _Shit._ How bad? No, he didn’t know why Peter’s aunt wasn’t answering their calls. She was probably at work—she wasn’t supposed to have her phone on her. Yes, he’d be right there. Give him twenty minutes. Tell Peter he was on his way. 

Tony must have looked as worried as he felt, if Happy’s lack of grumbling at being made to drive all the way to Forest Hills and wait in a school parking lot was any indication. He even brushed aside Tony’s promise to try and make things snappy. 

“Just take care of the kid,” Happy said as the passenger side door slammed shut.

Tony scoffed. As if he was ever going to do anything else.

Someone evidently warned the secretary Tony Stark was about to be making an appearance, because although she stumbled a bit over her greeting when he entered the main office, she composed herself admirably.

“Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Stark?” she asked, rising to her feet and wiping the front of her slacks. “Water? Coffee? We have vending machines if you’d like a soda.”

“Thank you but no,” he said. Desperation to see the kid was making his skin itch. “I’m here for Peter Parker? I received a call.”

“Of course.” She must have sensed his nerves were fraying, because she hastened to round the desk. “If you’ll follow me,” she said. “Peter’s in with Mr. Morita now.” 

The secretary guided him past a labyrinth of doors, each labelled with their respective proprietor or purpose—guidance counselor, printing, custodial, conference, nurse, vice principal—before coming to a stop in front of the principal’s. She knocked twice and poked her head in. “Mr. Morita? Mr. Stark is here.”   
  
She skirted out of the way. Tony stepped into the office. 

His hand was being shaken, and Tony was vaguely aware of Morita thanking him for coming on such short notice, but he ceased to register any of it the second his eyes latched onto Peter.

It was a nightmare incarnate. Curled up in the visitor’s chair closest to the wall, arms wrapped around his waist in a clear attempt at self-comfort, the kid seemed preposterously small—impossible to unify with the vigilante who once held a cloven ferry together with his bare hands. Minute shivers racked his body, and Tony fumbled to find a reason that Peter, who thought anything below 70 degrees was glacial, would be wearing only a short-sleeve shirt in the middle of winter. Even more baffling was the familiar woolen hat yanked over his head, low enough to nearly be covering his eyes.

But these were all secondary concerns. They paled in comparison to the fact that Peter looked like he’d been pummeled by a battering ram.

Tony’s fists clenched at his sides as he took in the damage: the deep red bruises, which would no doubt be black in a few hours, littering the kid’s arms and face; the inflamed bands of skin braceleting his wrists, as though he’d been handcuffed and towed behind a wagon through the streets; the crusted blood trailing from his nostrils down to his mouth; the split lower lip; the swollen right eye.  
  
“Jesus Christ. Peter.”  
  
Peter stared down at his lap. He wouldn’t meet Tony’s gaze.

“Mr. Stark?” Morita was saying. “Please, have a seat.”

Tony didn’t move. His focus remained locked on Peter. “He needs to see a doctor. Now.”

Peter still wouldn’t look at him.

“We have a very capable nurse on staff here, Mr. Stark,” Morita said. “She’s already examined Peter. I realize that his appearance is a bit of a shock, but I can promise you his injuries are superficial.”

“Superficial?” Tony hissed, turning towards the other man. “You call this _superficial_?”

Morita presented his palms in a peace offering. “Medically speaking,” he said. “From a disciplinary standpoint, of course this is an incredibly serious offense.”

“Who did this?” Tony demanded, jabbing in Peter’s direction. Even staring down, the kid must have seen the gesture in his periphery, because he recoiled at the sudden movement. As though he thought Tony was about to walk over and slap him. Jesus. What the fuck happened? What the _fuck_ happened? “Who the fuck did this to him?!”

“Mr. Stark, please,” Morita said. “I’ll explain everything, if you’ll just take a seat.”

Tony’s jaw ached from how hard he was grinding down on his teeth, but he somehow managed to squash the burning desire to continue his interrogation. The nod he aimed at Morita was rigid, his wrath barely held at bay, chomping at the bit to be loosed on _someone_. 

Peter’s eyes remained peeled to his lap as Tony slowly lowered himself into the visitor’s chair beside him.

“Hey bud.” His voice continued to quiver with suppressed fury, but the difference was night and day: the livid tone was shoved aside, replaced with something warm and coaxing. “Wearing hats in school now, huh? And I thought I was the rebel.” His attempt at levity fell woefully flat.

Peter’s arms constricted around his abdomen, the only sign he’d heard at all.

Morita sat, interlacing his fingers and resting his hands on the desk. “I know your time is extremely valuable, Mr. Stark, so I won’t waste it by equivocating,” he said, expression grave. “For reasons that are still unclear, Peter went down to the boys’ locker room at the start of first lunch period. A group of four other students followed him there and began to assault him.” 

Tony’s nails jabbed into his palms. His stare was arctic as it pinioned Morita.

“When Peter tried to fend them off, it caused enough of a commotion for Coach Wilson, our gym teacher, to investigate. He was able to break the fight apart before bringing all five boys here and reporting the incident. As you already know, we had trouble reaching Peter’s aunt, at which point you were called.”

There was silence for several seconds, broken only by the faint ticking of the wall clock. 

“‘All five boys,’” Tony quoted, blank-faced and without inflection. His posture was ramrod. “There’s only one here now. Where are the other four?”

“They’re being dealt with, Mr. Stark,” Morita said, with a precision that suggested he’d expected the question.

“I want their names,” Tony said, cold enough to freeze the Sahara into a tundra. He wasn’t playing games. This was Tony Stark, ruthless tech magnate who brought corporations to their knees. Tony Stark, former weapons developer who built one of the most formidable machines the world had ever seen in a barren Afghan cave. Tony Stark, Merchant of Death, who could single-handedly execute entire factions of terrorists in a five second span. This was Tony Stark, the man who took no hostages.

“Mr. Stark,” Morita began cautiously. To his credit, he looked empathetic.

But right now, Tony was too incensed to appreciate it. “ _Names_ ,” he snarled, beginning to lose his composure. 

Morita pursed his lips. “Mr. Stark, I acknowledge that Peter is the victim in this—that goes without saying—but the situation isn’t single-sided.”

“I would advise you,” Tony said, low and lethal, “to choose your next words carefully. I have an excessively large, excessively expensive team of lawyers at my disposal, Mr. Morita. And I promise, they will tear this school to the ground brick by brick if you people try to pin even a sliver of blame for this on my kid.”

The principal rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Midtown has a zero tolerance policy, Mr. Stark. And there’s unfortunately a limit to what qualifies as self-defense. We needed to call an ambulance for one of the boys because Peter pushed him so hard against a sink the nurse was worried he might have kidney damage. That was in addition to a broken wrist. Another boy got a concussion from having his head smashed into a locker.”

“Good!” It was a millimeter short of a shout. “They held my kid down and beat him to a pulp! They should be fucking grateful they walked out of that locker room on their own two feet, because if I’d been here two hours ago, they wouldn’t have been so _goddamn lucky_.”

“Mr. Stark, I understand your anger,” Morita said. “I really, honestly do. But you’re not the only person whose kid got hurt today. The other students’ parents—”

“Raised a bunch of scumbags who get their kicks from attacking an innocent child!”   
  
“And they’re being punished accordingly. But their parents are demanding that Peter receive at least a few days’ suspension, which isn’t—”

“Are you _fucking_ kidding me?!” Tony seethed. “No. We’re done here. You’re going to give me the names of whoever the fuck did this, and then I’m getting Peter the fuck out of this insane asylum and calling my lawyers to see what they have to say about you trying to punish an assault victim for—”

“Stop.”

It was almost inaudible—so soft Tony nearly missed it beneath the roar of his own thunderous, apoplectic pulse. But it was enough.

The utter misery on Peter’s face when Tony turned and met his gaze made his chest tighten.

“Just stop,” Peter implored with the same hollow brokenness. “It’s okay Mr. Stark. Please just drop it.”

Tony’s heartbeat continued to thud deafeningly in his ears. “No,” he said, struggling to keep calm. He’d never forgive himself if he took his rage out on Peter. “No, I’m not going to drop it.” 

“I don’t want you to do anything,” Peter said in a clogged voice. In any other situation, the beseeching eyes would have made Tony cede instantaneously. But he couldn’t. Not when one of those eyes was already ringed in purple.

“This isn’t something I’m backing down on, Pete,” he said, patient as he could. 

“Please, Mr. Stark.”

“You were _assaulted_. By multiple people. You were defending yourself. I’m not—”

“Tony,” Peter said. “ _Please_.”

None of this was adding up, he thought, anguish and ire and confusion sending his mind into a tailspin. What kind of psychopath did it take to attack someone as sweet and generous and good as Peter in the first place? What was the motive here? This was a high school, for fuck’s sake. This wasn’t a mugger getting a lucky punch in when Peter was out as Spider-Man. This was a deliberate, coordinated assault against a fifteen year old boy who’d never done a mean-spirited thing in his life. 

“This just doesn’t make sense, Pete.” It was a plea. A plea for some sort of understanding. A plea to let Tony fight for him. “Out of everyone in this school, why would they go after you?”

Peter flinched. His eyes dropped back to his lap. 

“Peter,” Morita said when the kid didn’t answer. “Can you take off the hat, please?”

The response was mumbled, but unambiguous. “No.”

Tony shifted in his chair, surprised and disconcerted in equal measure. That was the last thing he expected. For all Peter’s smart-aleck attitude when he was wearing his mask, it wasn’t in character for him to so brazenly disobey an authority figure. The kid was polite to a fault.

“This isn’t up for debate, Mr. Parker,” Morita said, the uncompromising statement blunted by his sympathetic tone. “I’m sorry, but the school is legally required to provide full disclosure to guardians in situations involving harassment or assault. My hands are tied. I’m bending the rules by qualifying Mr. Stark as a guardian since your aunt entrusted him with your care, and I’m only doing so because of the nature of this incident. But one of them has to know.” He leaned forward on his desk. “Have you changed your mind? Would you rather I email your aunt?”

“No,” Peter repeated, this time a whisper.

Morita looked sad. “Then I need you to take it off.”

Peter gave a tiny shake of his head. He looked like he was on the verge of tears.

Something was wrong. Something was badly, badly wrong.

Tony glanced at Morita. “You think you can give us a minute?” 

Morita seemed to hesitate, but then rose to his feet. “Of course.” He drifted towards the door, pausing when he grabbed the handle. “Peter,” he said, turning to the kid with a kind expression. “I want you to know there are resources available, alright? In case…if anything ever happens. There are programs that I can help connect you with.” When he was only met with more silence, he flashed Tony a strained smile. “I’ll be right outside whenever you’re ready. Please, take as much time as you need.”

The door clicked shut behind him. And then Tony and Peter were alone.

“I’m sorry.” Peter’s voice was as small as he looked. 

“Hush,” Tony said immediately. “None of that.” He stood, shrugging off his bespoke jacket. 

The kid startled when Tony draped it over him, but didn’t complain. “I told them not to call you,” he said instead. 

“Arms through the sleeves.” Tony went to maneuver Peter through the actions when his order wasn’t promptly followed, careful as he touched the blotchy flesh. Despite the shivers running through Peter’s frame, his skin felt feverish from the fresh bruises that stained it.

“I didn’t even know May entered you as my second emergency contact, otherwise I would’ve gotten Ned to hack the school’s computer system and take you back off. I’m so sorry for the bother, Mr. Stark.”

Tony squatted down in front of the chair, squeezing Peter’s knees. “Hey. I’m not—” 

“I know how busy you always are. I know you don’t have time to deal with this stupid little kid stuff. You probably had a meeting with the president today, or the pope, or…or…or Bill Gates. You don’t have time to—”

“That’s enough Peter,” Tony said, firm enough that the kid stopped short, shoulders drawn high in anxiety. He tapped Peter’s chest. “Anything under here you think I’d want to know about?” When Peter gave a feeble shrug, Tony guided his arms away from where they were once again hugging his midriff. “Just going to lift your shirt, kiddo,” he murmured in warning. 

It was unsurprising to discover that the violence hadn’t been limited to Peter’s face and limbs, but seeing the maroon patches smudged across his abdomen nonetheless made Tony ache. Slow enough for Peter to stop him if needed, Tony raised a hand back to his chest, pressing across the kid’s sternum and ribcage with careful, methodical fingers. Satisfied when Peter didn’t show any signs of pain at his touch, he let the shirt fall down into place, pulling the lapels of the jacket more securely around him. His attention moved back to Peter’s face. From this angle, the bruising on his cheeks and jaw and the dried blood beneath his nose looked even more gruesome. 

Tony reached over to the jacket’s breast pocket and pulled out the silk square folded inside, wetting it with his tongue; if Peter was bothered when Tony began to dab at his face, free hand holding the nape of Peter’s neck to keep him still, he gave no indication.

“Let’s get a few things straight,” Tony finally said. “One: I’m Tony Stark. I decide what I do with my schedule, thank you very much, and if I want to while away the hours with my favorite youth in his principal’s office, getting all nostalgic for my rebellious college days when I screwed the pooch so many times the dean of students and I were making friendship bracelets for each other within the first week, then that’s my prerogative, capisce? Bill doesn’t hold a candle to you.” 

Tony blotted away the last remnants of blood from Peter’s upper lip. Frowned. Put a feather-light thumb against the split in his lower lip. After a moment, he leaned back and stuffed the ruined pocket square into his waistcoat.

“Two,” he continued, “I _asked_ May to include me on your emergency contact form. Nope,” he interrupted when Peter went to cut in. “Grown up’s talking. You’ll have your chance in a second, but for now it’s time to zip it and listen.” He sighed. “Look. Bud. I’m not trying to replace Uncle Ben, alright?” 

Peter’s eyes were big and shining where they peeked out from beneath the cuff of his hat, but he didn’t speak. 

“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of pulling it off. You know why? Because people are going to keep coming into your life and falling in love with you, since that’s just what people do when they meet Peter Parker, and you’re probably going to love some of them back. But no matter how many times that happens, or how many different forms those relationships take, Ben will always, _always_ be your uncle. That’s something that’ll never change. No one will ever be able to take him from you. They can’t erase his memory, or the pieces of him that are still alive in you. Those are yours, Pete. For forever. But if you’ll let me,” Tony continued gently, “I’d like to try and fill a bit of the gap he left behind. Not replace him. Alright? Just take over a few of the jobs he’s not able to do anymore. Like being backup for when school calls and says you need someone to come and Aunt May can’t get there in that moment.” He paused, giving Peter time to absorb his words. “Will you let me do that?”

Peter’s breath hitched. “Yes,” he managed to squeak. Beneath the darkening bruises, his face was pallid.  
  
“Good. Glad we’ve got that settled,” Tony said, sotto voce. He began massaging his thumbs in relaxed, steady circles into Peter’s knees, trying to brace them both. “Which brings us to the next order of business.” 

It was as if someone had doused Peter in icy water: he jolted, arms spasming against his sides, then crumpled in on himself.

“Please don’t,” he said, hoarse and sore. He shrank further down in the chair. Dug his fingers into his sides like they were talons. Swallowed. “Please, Mr. Stark. Please.” 

Tony’s pulse began to thud harder, faster. The fuck had they done to his kid?

“Peter,” he soothed, bringing a hand up to cup Peter’s cheek. “Everything’s going to be alright, buddy. I promise. I _promise_ , Pete.” 

“Please,” Peter begged.

Tony licked his lips. “I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

A fraction of a whimper escaped Peter’s throat. 

“Peter,” Tony said. “Do you trust me?”

Peter squeezed his eyes closed. Whimpered again. Tilted his head forward into Tony’s palm—an incremental but unmistakable nod. 

“Okay. Good boy. You’re okay, bud,” he said, before reaching out and pulling off the hat.

Tony froze. Hot, incandescent rage pooled into his belly.

Because someone had taken his kid—his Peter, who was only six when he watched dirt being thrown into his mom and dad’s graves, who was only nine when a grown man decided to pin him to a mattress and wrench from his tiny grasp one of the few things that could never be given back, who barely over a year ago cradled his uncle’s body in a dirty alley as its warmth leached away into the night air, who continued to get to his feet again and again and again and freely give his everything to the very world that continued to kick him to the ground—someone had taken Tony’s kid and held him down and scrawled _FAGGOT_ across his forehead in thick, black, permanent marker.

“Pete.” It was visceral. Grunted as though he’d been punched in the stomach. Tony stared in horror at the ugly letters. 

He’d never been so angry in his entire life. Not after Yinsen’s murder. Not after Obie’s betrayal. Not even as he lay on the floor of a cold Siberian bunker and watched Steve walk away from their friendship after lying to Tony for years, Maria Stark’s killer at his side. 

Tony felt like he was dying. His anger was going to boil him alive from the inside out. 

“Peter,” he choked. “Oh, honey.” 

That was all it took. The uncontrollable whine that burst from beneath Peter’s tightly pressed lips sounded like it was being torn from his larynx. He jerked away and rushed to yank his legs up onto the chair, wrapping his arms around them and burying his face in his knees as if too ashamed to let Tony even see him.

This was cruelty on another scale. This was beyond human comprehension. Tony’s chest was heaving. 

“You’re okay,” he said, guttural and urgent. The knuckles of his right hand were white where they clenched Peter’s hat. The fingers of his left hovered uselessly above Peter’s bowed head. The dueling desires to touch—to caress, to heal—and to seek revenge—to hunt down the animals that had committed a fucking hate crime against his kid and rend their limbs from their sockets, splinter their bones and make it impossible for them to ever write such a disgusting word again—paralyzed him. 

_Fix this_ , Tony’s mind demanded amid the violent, swirling gales of half-formed thoughts. _Our child is crying. Fix this_ now.  
  
“Peter,” he breathed, eyes stinging. “Can I hold you?” 

Tony was pulling him forward before Peter had even finished nodding. He wrapped one arm around the trembling body and brought the other up to cradle the back of Peter’s head, guiding him so he could press his dripping face into the crook of Tony’s neck. 

“You’re okay.” He buried his nose in Peter’s hair. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said wetly, miniscule and broken as shattered glass. 

“No.” It was too vehement, too sharp for the still room. Peter flinched, sending a piercing pain of guilt through Tony’s side. He needed to get himself under control. He couldn’t afford to lose it right now—not with Peter clinging to him like a buoy in a tsunami. “No,” he said again, soft despite the unyielding edge that remained. “You don’t apologize. I won’t allow it. Do you hear me, Peter Benjamin Parker? You will not apologize for this.”

Tony himself wasn’t certain what he was referring to: the horrific events that culminated in this moment, Peter curled into a fetal position on a chair in his principal’s office, plunging towards a panic attack as Tony knelt in front of him, unable to offer anything but his embrace; or the part of Peter that made someone believe they were warranted to assault him in the first place. It didn’t make any difference though. A universe didn’t exist in which Tony was going to sit there and condone Peter blaming himself for either one.  
  
But Peter wasn’t listening. “I’m sorry.” The whimper didn’t even sound human.

“No apologies,” Tony entreated. He couldn’t bear to hear them. It would kill him. He felt like he was dying. He was going through the wormhole all over again, grasping for life against the onslaught of a devastating, unforgiving force. “You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry, Tony,” and Christ, Tony didn’t know how he was supposed to do this. Nothing could have prepared him. He was just as lost now as he’d always been. “I didn’t mean to. I was trying to do better. I promise. I was—”

Tony shushed him, arms tightening. “You’re okay,” he said, nothing but a broken record, so utterly, utterly useless because no amount of research—no amount of pediatric journals between cups of coffee or muted New Queer Cinema on his phone during meetings or crisis intervention manuals as he waited for suit upgrades to finish or studies on discrimination in the back seat as Happy honked his way through traffic jams—none of it could have ever prepared him for this. “You’re okay.” All the while his mind screaming at him to _fix this, fix this_. “I’m not mad. Not at you. You haven’t done anything wrong, alright?”

“I was trying to get better.” Peter was hyperventilating now, fast and warm and moist against Tony’s neck. “I was going to get better.”

This was the wormhole. Tony was dying. He was helpless. Because where the hell did he even begin with that? What could he possibly do to make this go away? _Fix this, fix this_ , but what could he say to heal a wound that had been neglected for so long, that Tony had stood by and allowed to fester, whose infection had spread so thoroughly? There was nothing. He had nothing.

He started to rock them back and forth, back and forth, trying to lull Peter’s desperate gasps into a less frantic rhythm.

“You weren’t supposed to find out.”

Tony pressed his lips to the soft skin behind his kid’s ear. Held them there a moment, inhaling the scent of dollar store shampoo.   
  
Then, gentler than sunrise: “Peter? I’ve known for a while now, honey.”

Peter stiffened, a statue in his arms. Then with a wheeze, whatever energy had been propping him up drained away; he slumped forward, limp against Tony’s chest. There was a single, strangled sob before the room went quiet, save for the ticking of the clock and Peter’s shuddering breaths. 

He, like Tony, had no words left to say.


	3. Chapter 3

The drive from Midtown to Tony’s SoHo penthouse was spent in stifling silence. 

Happy continued to glance at the rear view mirror in ten second intervals, almost like he was afraid the two passengers in his back seat were going to poof from existence at any moment. But the scene remained unchanged: Peter on the left, coat drawn tight around him, his wool-capped head resting on the window, quivering breaths fogging the glass, lifeless eyes—one amethyst and swollen, both bloodshot—fixed on the gray New York streets blurring by; and Tony sitting opposite, clasping his wrist, trying and largely failing not to stare. His arms ached with the desire to draw Peter back into them, but from the way the kid was leaning heavily against the door, creating as much space between them as the Rolls-Royce allowed, Tony knew the gesture wouldn’t be welcomed.

He met Happy’s gaze in the mirror. Happy looked pointedly at the kid, raising a brow. Tony shook his head with a grimace.

If Peter noticed the exchange, he didn’t call them out. 

Not that Tony expected him to. Aside from one fleeting bout of panic, Peter had remained unresponsive to Tony’s attempts to engage him ever since he withdrew from their earlier embrace. 

Shock, Tony’s worried thoughts had supplied as Peter slipped into what Tony could only describe as a dissociative state, retreating to the same position Tony found him in—huddled in the office chair, hugging his midriff, staring down at his lap. Even wrapped in the pinstripe jacket, he was trembling.

“Hey you,” Tony had murmured, rubbing his hands up and down Peter’s thighs—trying to warm him, ground him—but Peter hadn’t reacted. He hadn’t reacted when Tony brushed through his hair and replaced his knit hat, gingerly tugging it over the repulsive letters that continued to make Tony’s stomach twist in equal parts rage and grief. Peter hadn’t reacted when Tony began massaging the nape of his neck, tilting him closer and pressing their foreheads together. He hadn’t reacted to Tony’s stream of reassurances that everything was okay, Peter was okay—that Tony wasn’t mad, or disappointed, or ashamed, or whatever else was going through his mind. He hadn’t reacted to Tony’s pleas for the names of his attackers, nor the pleas to let Tony fight for him against the school’s appalling position. It was only when Tony began throwing around words like _lawyers_ and _legal actions_ that Peter, as though released from a spell, stirred.

“No lawyers,” he said to the floor, high and tight as a violin string stretched to its snapping point. His inhalations came shorter, faster, to the point Tony feared he was going to start hyperventilating again. “Then I’d have to tell Aunt May. Please. I can’t. I can’t. I—”

“Okay,” Tony rushed to agree, cradling Peter’s face and stroking both thumbs back and forth across his cheekbones. Standing down went against every cell in his body, but in that moment he’d do anything, so long as it had a chance of soothing the unbridled terror in Peter’s wet eyes. “You’re okay, bud. No one’s telling Aunt May. No lawyers. No lawyers, I promise.” 

Tony didn’t break promises. Not to his kid. But he could still work with this; removing his lawyers from the playing cards was only a slight inconvenience at best. He didn’t need lawyers to win. All he needed was for his bluff to not be called. And Tony was feeling lucky on that front: he had a formidable poker face. 

Morita was waiting for them in one of the chairs down the hall, holding a phone to his face and frowning. When they stepped out of the office though—Tony’s arm secure around Peter’s shoulders, keeping the kid pressed close to his side out of an irrational fear someone might try to rip him away—he stood. Tony caught him mumbling something about calling back later before hanging up.

He tracked Morita’s tentative approach in his periphery, but otherwise ignored the man in favor of shepherding Peter towards the single-user restroom he’d spotted earlier.

“Why don’t you take a few minutes to catch your breath?” The encouragement was soft—a susurration meant for Peter’s ears alone. “Maybe wash your face? I bet some cold water would feel good right now.” 

There wasn’t much to be done for the darkening bruises, but at the very least, Tony could make sure the tearstains and dried snot were rinsed off before they ventured into the hallways. Impatient as he was to get the kid out of this hellhole, there would be enough fodder for the rumor mill as it was. They didn’t need to fuel the flames by running into another student while the evidence of Peter’s breakdown was still so visible. 

“We’ll head home as soon as you’re ready, alright?” Tony nudged him forward the last couple steps. Peter mechanically obeyed the gentle push. “I’ll be right outside bud,” he said, giving the back of Peter’s neck one more comforting squeeze before closing the door behind him. 

Tony waited, breath held. The kid had faded back into the same unresponsive haze as earlier, and Tony was growing more anxious with each passing second. Seeing Peter act so catatonic—not knowing if he was even aware of the events unfolding around him, not knowing how to help, aside from getting him to the nearest ER for a psych eval (and why the hell had Tony never considered adding a mental health specialist to the med team? Why was he constantly, _constantly_ failing his kid?)—was fucking terrifying.  
  
But there it was: the faint, quick click of a lock falling into place. Tony felt a wave of relief sluice over his body. 

Pete was still with him.

“Mr. Stark?”

His gaze drifted to the ceiling, and he allowed himself the luxury of three long seconds before turning to face Morita.

The principal was holding Peter’s backpack and coat—the Target discount Tony had foisted upon him what felt like three lifetimes ago. “I got Peter’s things from his locker,” Morita said with a hesitance that suggested he was half-expecting to be decked. 

Tony couldn’t exactly fault him for it—he wasn’t feeling extremely generous towards the man who wanted to punish _Tony’s kid_ for _self-defense_ of all fucking things—but throwing punches wasn’t going to help Peter. That was something Steve would do. 

“I didn’t want him to spend any more time in the hallways than necessary,” Morita hedged, proffering Peter’s belongings. 

Tony resisted his first impulse: to glare at Morita and jeer _I don’t like being handed things by people not worth my time_. “Thanks,” he said instead, voice stiff as his posture. He slung the backpack over one shoulder and accepted the bundled coat, but then paused, frowning down at the too-thin polyester. It was forty degrees outside. “This was all that was there? He didn’t have any other clothes with him?”

Based on the hard set of his jaw, Morita would have rather been anywhere else. “That was one of the things I was still hoping to discuss with you,” he admitted. “None of the boys confirmed it was theirs, but Coach Wilson did find a sweatshirt left behind in the locker room.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at Morita’s obvious circumvention. What wasn’t he saying? “I’d like to see it.”

“Of course.” Morita straightened his tie. “It’s in my office. It might be best if we continue this there.”

Tony’s fingers tightened around the backpack strap, but he bit his tongue. With a huff, he pivoted again to the restroom and tapped a light knuckle against the door. “Pete?” he said quietly. 

Any other day, the kid could have heard a feather drift to the ground from a mile away, but as things stood, Tony wasn’t sure how much of their conversation—if any—he’d followed. 

“Hey kiddo. I need to talk to Mr. Morita real quick. Will you be okay here on your own for a second?” Any hope Tony had siphoned off as the moments ticked by without answer. He sighed. “I’m just going to his office, okay? Twenty feet away if you need me. I’ll be right back, bud, I promise.”

Tony followed Morita across the hall, this time rejecting the offered seat with a pithy, “I’m fine, thanks.” Sitting would have been an impossible feat. His limbs were restless with the need to have this entire ordeal over and done with—to get Peter away from this place, back to the penthouse where Tony could bundle him up on the sectional, layer him in blankets until the shivering finally abated, put on _Star Wars_ or _Princess Bride_ or _Ghostbusters_ or any other really old movie the kid loved that had a chance of distracting him from the trauma of this day, ply him with hot cocoa or pizza or beluga caviar or whatever the fuck he wanted because Tony would do anything, give anything, go to any lengths to make this absolute fucking nightmare a little less awful. 

Morita seemed to resign himself to Tony’s looming presence. He gave a terse nod, settling into his own chair behind the desk. There was a crinkling noise as Morita opened one of the bottom drawers and retrieved a lumpy grocery bag from within.

“As I said, none of the boys claimed it.” Morita’s tone was somber. There was more crinkling as he pulled a sweatshirt from the plastic, setting it on the far corner of the desk. 

Tony tucked Peter’s coat beneath his arm, then picked up his old Black Sabbath hoodie—one he’d lent Peter a few months back after the kid spilled ethyl acetate on himself making web fluid in the lab. It was three sizes too big, but for all Peter’s embarrassed sputtering when Tony teased him about looking like a toddler who raided their parents’ closet to play dress-up, the hoodie had remained mysteriously absent from Tony’s dresser ever since.

Any warmth kindled by the idea of Peter wearing Tony’s clothes to school was extinguished as he took in its mutilated state. The damp red patches alone were enough to enrage him, but at least those he’d been prepared for, having seen the kid’s split lip and bloodied nose. 

What he hadn’t expected was for the entire front to be in tatters. Shredded open down the center as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and hacked their way through the thick gray cotton from hem to neck. 

No, he thought. Not _as if_. That’s exactly what happened. Those scumbags had gone into that locker room prepared to cut Peter’s clothes from his body.

Molten lead surged through Tony’s veins.

This was his breaking point. There would be no coup de grâce after this. There would be no mercy. He was going to make them pay.

“In regard to next steps, I—”

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” The words dripped from his tongue like poison. “As soon as Peter’s ready to leave, I’m signing him out with the strict understanding that he’s not going to face _any_ repercussions for trying to _protect himself_ while he was being _fucking assaulted_. And if his aunt calls after we’re gone, you’re not going to breathe a word. You’re going to send her directly to me. And I suggest you listen, _Mr. Morita_ ,” Tony spat when the principal opened his mouth, “because I tend to get pissed off when people mess with my kid, and right now, that really doesn’t bode well for you.”

Morita’s jaw snapped shut.  
  
“You are going to give me the names of whoever the fuck did this. And then you’re going to expel every single one of them.”

“Mr. Stark, please,” Morita pleaded. “I can’t just expel students without due process. There are procedures for—”

“They will never be allowed to re-enroll at Midtown,” Tony forged on, struggling to keep his delivery measured. “They will never set foot on this campus again. They will never be allowed to enroll in another school in this district. If by some miracle any of them manage to get a diploma, they will not apply to colleges in any of the same states as Peter. They will not contact Peter. They will not talk about Peter. They fucking breathe in Peter’s direction and all bets are off.”

“Mr. Stark, _please_. You—”

“That’s my offer. My _incredibly generous_ offer.” He took a menacing step forward. Morita stilled. “If the school chooses not to accept it, you can look forward to a million dollar lawsuit for negligent supervision resulting in the assault of a minor. A minor whose wellbeing _you_ were responsible for. And if any of Peter’s assailants choose not to accept it, then I promise, I _promise_ they will be spending time behind bars. Juvenile offenders or not, New York doesn’t tend to go light on hate crimes. Expulsion will be the least of their concerns when they’re facing a five-year prison sentence.”

Morita didn’t need to voice his thoughts. His eyes said it all. Tony had him backed into a corner. 

“Peter’s staying home tomorrow.” Tony straightened from where he’d been leaning over the desk, glaring Morita down like a lioness poised to go in for the kill. “You have until the end of the day. After that, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers.” He made his way to the door, shoving the tattered hoodie into Peter’s backpack as he went. Evidence. Just in case. “And while you’re contacting all the relevant parties, pass on one more message for me, will you? I’m owed a lot of favors by a lot of powerful people. Executives. Chairmen. High ranking military personnel. World leaders. You know the sort. I doubt they’ll have many reservations blacklisting a few homophobic degenerates who go around attacking children four against one.” 

Tony paused just before he stepped into the hall, turning to pierce Morita with a final, deadly look. True to metaphor, Morita’s expression mirrored every inch what he was in that moment: an unarmed man caught between an irate lioness and her injured cub. 

“Wish your students luck with their careers,” Tony said. “They’re going to need it.” 

* * *

It took the better part of an hour before Happy was finally turning onto Tony’s street, and his quiet question—“Garage or lobby, Boss?”—was the first any of them had spoken since leaving the school.

Tony snuck another glimpse at Peter from the corner of his eye. The kid was still staring vacantly out his window. “Garage please, Hap.” 

With a nod, Happy drove around to the entrance of Tony’s private subterranean garage. He pulled through as soon as FRIDAY had drawn up the metal gate for them, gliding the Rolls-Royce to a stop near the elevator that led straight to the penthouse. 

The engine cut. The two men waited. Peter didn’t move.

Tony met Happy’s gaze in the rear view mirror for the umpteenth time.

“Hey kiddo,” he said softly, shifting back to Peter. “We’re home.”

But it wasn’t until Tony moved to touch him that Peter reacted. With a sudden, renewed burst of life, he was dodging Tony’s hand. He ripped off his seatbelt and flung open the door, hurtling himself from the car. 

“Pete!” Tony reached after him, but he already knew it was a lost cause: if the kid didn’t want to be caught, he wouldn’t be. (During one of their initial training sessions at the Compound, Tony had clocked him running at over two hundred miles per hour—far exceeding Cap, he’d thought at the time with smug satisfaction.)

There was no smugness now. Only an empty space beside him and the faint whoosh of the elevator doors sliding shut.

Tony stared after him, lips pressed into a thin line.  
  
Happy turned to face the back seat. Anyone else would have missed the worry hidden beneath his scowl. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

Tony glanced at him. “No.” He undid his seatbelt with a furrowed brow. “Sorry. Classified information, authorized personnel only. I’m sure as forehead of security you understand.”

Happy’s scowl deepened. “That’s not funny. You know I struggle with all the rapid advances in technology. Just because you—”

“I need you to clear my schedule,” Tony said.  
  
“I’m not your PA,” Happy grumbled, already pulling his phone from his pocket. “For how long?”

“At least through to Monday. We’ll see where it goes from there.” Tony got out, grabbing Peter’s backpack from the floor as he went and shouldering it. Then he leaned down, poking his head back into the car. “Hey Happy? Thanks.”

He humphed. “Yeah,” he said gruffly. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Peter had Happy wrapped around his finger. “Sure. Why not? I can’t think of any better way to spend my afternoon than babysitting a superhero.”

“I’m the babysitter. You’re just the chauffeur.”

“I wasn’t talking about the kid.”

Tony’s smile was small, but genuine. 

He swung his door shut, then went around to do the same for Peter’s—still hanging open from where the kid had made a break for it. “Happy trails,” he said, patting the roof of the car.

Happy rolled down his window before Tony could make it even an inch. “I’m not blind Tony,” he said, all traces of annoyance wiped from his expression. “Classified info or not, the kid looks like he just did ten rounds in a ring with the Hulk. If you need someone to get their asses handed back to them, you know where to find me. No questions asked.” 

Tony took a moment to contemplate his friend before nodding. “Thanks, Hap.” 

Happy gave one sharp nod of his own. “Good. Now go take care of the little twerp. Get a steak on that eye. Spider-Man can’t be seen walking around with a shiner like that.”

“We wear masks for a reason,” Tony said as he walked away, flashing a peace sign without looking back when he stepped into the elevator. As soon as the doors slid together, the facade dropped: he leaned all his weight against the wall, deflating with an exhausted sigh, and scrubbed at his goatee. 

Somewhere around the twentieth floor, he broke the silence. “FRIDAY?” 

“In his bedroom Boss,” she said. Then, without prompt, “Experts advise giving teenagers space to process emotional distresses before intervening as necessary.”

He rolled his eyes. When the elevator opened into the penthouse though, he resisted the urge to make a beeline for the kid, passing Peter’s closed door in favor of moving further down the hall towards his own. The backpack was tossed onto the bed, the three-piece chucked into a corner of the walk-in closet for Pepper to nag him about later, but Tony couldn’t find the energy to care. Instead, he tugged on a pair of well-worn jeans and sweater, then wandered back to the kitchen, intent on making up for Peter’s missed lunch.  
  
His phone began to vibrate just as he was reaching for the fridge. Tony grimaced when he saw the caller I.D., but hit _Accept_. “Hey May.” It wasn't quite as nonchalant as he'd have liked. “Day treating you well?”

“What the hell is going on?”

“You know, I often wonder that myself,” he said, the words tumbling forth of their own accord. He never had learned how to stop putting his foot in his stupidly big mouth. “I think the main problem is our increased daily exposure to negative news. I’ve considered swearing off social media altogether, but the marketing team won’t let me.”

“Not in the mood, Tony,” she snapped. 

He winced. May had made it clear from the get-go that she wasn’t exactly his number one fan—not as Iron Man, irresponsible Savior of New York whose devil-may-care heroics somehow always ended up causing more destruction than they prevented, and certainly not as Tony Stark, debonair playboy who seemed to believe the silver spoon he’d been born with was a Get Out of Jail Free card to life. When he’d first come to recruit Spidey, May’s suspicion had wafted into his face with enough pungency to nearly overpower the smell of burnt walnut date loaf. (Nearly.) He never held it against her though. From an outsider’s perspective, he could acknowledge it looked a tad un-kosher; celebrity owners of multi-trillion-dollar companies who moonlighted as superheroes didn’t just show up in rundown apartment buildings on a sketchier side of Queens, making inquiries about fourteen year old boys and grant money and weekend retreats at fancy hotels.

But May, miraculously, allowed it. She allowed the retreat. She allowed the internship. She allowed the lab days and the Compound sleepovers and the _Would you just take it Pete? You’ll be doing me a favor. I need a guinea pig to test this model out before I okay it for production_ Stark tech. It made Tony hopeful. She must have seen _some_ redeeming quality in him.

Then came the Spider-Man revelation. And hadn’t that been a real shindig of a time, trying to convince May with increasing desperation to give him a second chance at being part of Pete’s life. Tony Stark didn’t grovel, but he came embarrassingly close when after two weeks went by, May’s resounding _No_ still showed no signs of budging. He wasn’t sure what swayed her in the end: the box of donuts he’d been holding when she answered his knock (fresh from the corner bakery Peter mentioned going to with his aunt and uncle every Sunday morning once upon a time, back before Ben’s death made the tradition too painful to continue), or Tony’s mumbled admission that he didn’t really do feelings, but he maybe kind of a tiny little bit loved the kid. One way or another though, May’s expression had softened an almost imperceptible amount.

“You’re on paper-thin ice, Stark,” she said, snatching the box from his hands before moving back from the threshold. “Peter doesn’t have any plans after school. I want him home by six. Six o’clock _sharp_.” She slammed the door in his grinning face.

Their relationship had finally reached a comfortable lukewarm. It was kind of fun—like playing the unrequited half of two divorcees in a daytime soap. He continued trying to win May’s affections. May continued trying to tolerate him, if only for Peter’s sake. And like divorced parents, they hashed out a joint custody agreement: May got Peter from Monday afternoon through Friday morning and the first weekend of every month, unless she was working a double or it was her turn to host the book club, in which case Peter could stay with Tony _as long as Tony remembered he needed to be in bed at a decent time on school nights_. Tony got him the remaining weekends, plus three hours on lab days, assuming Pete’s grades didn’t slip. May of course had dibs on birthdays and holidays, but would be willing to negotiate locations.

The effortlessness with which Tony settled into the foreign yet familiar-feeling domestic routine probably should have concerned him.

Then again, when had he ever let a simple _should_ stand in his way?

“You want to know how my day’s been?” came May’s voice from the speaker. “Terrible, Tony. It’s been terrible. You know why?”

“Um…mariachi band on the subway again?”

“Because instead of being able to enjoy my break, as soon as I punched out, I found eight new messages from Peter’s school in my voicemail telling me there had been, quote unquote, ‘an altercation.’”

“May—”

“I just got off the phone with his principal,” she said. “You know what he told me?”

Tony stiffened. “I’ll bite.”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was too busy begging me—Peter’s _guardian_ —to call you before I made him talk. So I ask again. What the _hell_ is going on?”

Tony ran a hand down his face. “He really didn’t say anything?”

“Only that Iron Man came and got my kid shortly before I called. Apparently you made an impression.”

“Good,” Tony said with vicious satisfaction.

“No,” May said, her aggravation clear. “Not ‘good.’ What did you do? Because Principal Morita was almost in tears when I talked to him. I understand that you’re new to this, but you can’t go around bullying faculty members so you can bail Peter out of detention or whatever it was they were trying to give him. Kids need to learn. If he got into a fight, the school has every right to—”

“It wasn’t a _fight_!” The protest was far closer to a shout than Tony intended, and his eyes flew to the hall. 

The second bedroom had been soundproofed a while ago, shortly after Tony started referring to it as _Peter’s room_ in his mind—both to provide Pete a place of respite from the constant barrage of New York’s noise pollution, and to lend Tony and Pepper some much-needed privacy from the kid’s enhanced hearing. The installation wasn’t infallible though. Loud enough volumes could still percolate through the walls.

Tony released a slow breath when there was no sign of movement. “It wasn’t a fight,” he repeated at a lower pitch. “It was… God, it was a fucking ambush. A group of students ganged up on him, okay? None of this is Pete’s fault.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Ganged up on him?” May asked, matching his somber tone. “What does that mean? Is Peter okay?”

“Physically? It’s pretty bad, May.”

“How bad?”

“You remember when Pete went up against that Sin-Eater guy?”

“Right.” May’s voice was tight. “Is he okay otherwise?”

“No.” Tony propped the phone between his shoulder and ear, opening the fridge and surveying the available stock. “But he will be.”

“Tony,” May said. “What happened?”

“They cornered him in the locker room and used him as their punching bag,” he growled. “And I don’t know what kind of stunt that fucking school is trying to pull, trying to punish our kid for defending himself, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting that shit stand.”

“The locker room?” She sounded as angry and confused as him, and Tony felt an unexpected sense of relief at their consonance. “I thought this happened during lunch?”

“It did,” Tony said, taking his aggression out on a loaf of whole wheat. It hit the kitchen island with a disappointingly muted thud. “I’m still working on figuring out the details. We just got back to the penthouse. I want to at least get Pete settled in before I start interrogating him.”

“Do you at least know how it started?” May demanded. “This doesn’t sound like the usual name-calling gone out of hand. This sounds coordinated.”

Tony had been rifling through the cupboards in search of a cutting board, but at that, he stilled. “There’s a usual name-calling?”

May was silent for another long moment. “We don’t all spend our weekends drinking champagne on the decks of luxury yachts, Tony.” The statement was blunt, but somehow, she made it sound almost loving. “Peter attends a private school where tuition is forty two grand a year. That’s well over half my income. Ben’s life insurance has helped, but there’s no way Peter would be able to go to Midtown if it wasn’t for his scholarship. And sometimes students whose parents can afford to pay out of pocket like to remind him of that.”

A sudden spark of pain shot up Tony’s left arm. The cutting board went crashing to the floor. 

Christ. This kid. “Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

May sighed. “Maybe look around that penthouse of yours and see if you can find an answer.”

Despite himself, as soon as he’d retrieved the board and set it on the island, Tony did just that. 

The penthouse looked as it always did—light and open and lavish. Around him, the counters were sleek and spacious, each shiny appliance equipped with an exorbitant number of buttons. If it weren’t for the photos plastered across the stainless steel fridge (ones Peter had taken, plus a few _of_ Peter May had passed along to him), Tony could have been standing in a cover shoot for an interior design magazine. The kitchen’s mahogany floorboards gave way to a vast expanse of creamy carpeting. Towering floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded the living and dining areas, and aside from the narrow section of solid wall that framed a massive TV-mounted fireplace, the view of Manhattan’s skyline was uninhibited. The sprawling furniture was plush, the art modern, the grand piano glossy. The limestone stairs to his left led up to the lab, and above that the rooftop swimming pool, encased in glass walls for a seamless convergence with the outside terrace. Beneath the staircase was the hallway leading to more of the same: high ceilings, panoramic views, built-in fireplaces. Alaskan King beds and marble bathrooms and Jacuzzi tubs.

Without meaning to, Tony’s thoughts shifted to the evenings he’d spent at the Parkers’ apartment—eating from takeout cartons in front of a small TV, him on one end of the lumpy couch, May on the other, the kid sandwiched between them. He thought of propping his socked feet on a coffee table littered with colored pencil gouges—remnants of six year old Peter. Running his fingers over the water-damaged spines of thrift store books. Peter’s cramped room. Its metal-frame bunkbed and thin mattresses. LEGOs and dirty laundry, tossed across the stained rug and scratched faux-wood flooring. The second-hand desk housing half-finished homework and laptops that had once been somebody else’s garbage. 

Of course Pete wouldn’t tell him. _Of course_ he wouldn't.

Tony’s mouth was dry. “You know I’m always here, if you ever—”

“Tony.” May’s warning was unambiguous.

Right. One problem at a time.

“Listen.” He grabbed a tomato and sliced into it, forcing himself to return to the task at hand. “I’m going to ask you for a favor. A big favor. And you’re going to say no, but I really, really need you to not.”

“Oh, God.”

“May. Please. Just… I need you to let me handle this one. On my own.”

“No,” was her immediate, predictable answer. “Tony, we agreed when this started that we were going to tag-team it.”

“I know. And I’m sorry. But you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“No.”

“Please, May.”

“ _No_. We agreed. No more secrets.”

He slathered mayo over a piece of bread, mind scrambling for a way to make a convincing argument without breaking Peter’s trust. “I know we said no secrets. I know that. But—”

“You—”  
  
“I’m trying to protect our kid, May.”

This time, the silence lasted for so long that Tony had to pull the phone back and check the screen, making sure they hadn’t lost connection.

When she finally did speak, it was solemn enough to lead a dirge. “Okay. Okay. This one can be yours. But this one _only_.”

His shoulders slumped in relief. “ _Thank you_.” 

Their conversation ended soon after that. Tony’s voice must have given something away, because May didn’t argue when he asked to keep Peter for the night. Nor when he told her he had no intention of letting the kid go to school the next day. Yet again, by some miracle, the unstoppable force that was May Parker agreed to it all. 

Once Tony hung up, he took a moment to gather himself. It was Thursday, which meant he had the next three and a half full days until he had to give Pete back to his aunt. Three and a half days to figure out a game plan. Three and a half days to at least begin fixing this absolute, godawful mess. 

Well. He had to start somewhere. And for lack of any better options, basic needs would have to do.

Equipped with a plate of sandwiches stacked to precarious heights—with pickles, smushed down real flat—Tony made his way to Peter’s room, pausing when he reached the door. He heaved a deep breath. Braced himself.

Then tapped his knuckles against the wood. “Pete? Can I come in?” 

When several moments passed without any response, he cracked open the door and peered in, quickly scanning. The bedroom, as per usual, looked like it had recently been swept up and redeposited by a tornado (“It’s _organized_ chaos, Mr. Stark.”), but was otherwise deserted. The ensuite door, however, was ajar. Beneath the sound of running water, he heard a strangled sob.

Alarmed, Tony abandoned the sandwiches atop Peter’s dresser and crossed the room. He edged the door another few inches, then took in the scene. 

Peter’s back was to him, hat and jacket gone, the bruises on his arms significantly darker than they had been only an hour ago. The kid was hunched over the sink, pressing all his weight down on the counter to either side like it was the only thing preventing him from collapsing. A sopping washcloth was lying in a small puddle at his feet. Tony’s attention drifted up to the mirror. In the reflection, he could see Peter’s forehead was rubbed raw—scoured with such violence the skin looked close to bleeding—but the letters were all still there, black and thick as they had been in the office. 

The ache in Tony’s chest was so staggering he wondered if his Arc Reactor was malfunctioning, before remembering he’d had it removed long ago. “Pete.”

The kid spun around at the sound of his name, bloodshot eyes so wide he might as well have been caught robbing a bank red-handed. But then with a flinch, he seemed to remember why he was there in the first place. Same as before, his arms came up to hug his waist as he ducked his head and stumbled back, further into the bathroom. Away from Tony.  
  
Tony’s palms went into the air. “You’re okay, kiddo,” he said softly. “It’s just me.” 

Peter shuffled back another foot as Tony eased into the bathroom. His gaze flitted to the door for a fraction of a second before darting back down, almost like he was calculating an escape route. Like he was afraid Tony was going to attack him.

Christ, Pete.

“It’s just me,” Tony said, creeping towards the running sink with his palms still raised. “Just Tony. You’re okay. You’re safe.” He turned the faucet off as soon as he was close enough, then at a glacial pace bent down, grabbing the washcloth from the floor and setting it aside. When he turned towards the kid, he made a conscious effort to relax his posture. Peter was an empath through and through, soaking in others’ joy and sadness and excitement with unmatched voracity. If Tony let his distress show, it was only going to escalate Peter’s tenfold. 

“Pete?” he tried. “Can you look at me?”

If anything, Peter’s head dropped even lower. Every muscle in his body was tensed, ready to bolt at any second. 

There was an agonizing hush before Peter admitted, the quiet words imbued with defeat, “It won’t come off.” 

Tony took a hesitant step forward, wetting his lips. Peter, to his profound relief, stayed put. “We’ll get it off, bud. Okay? That’s a promise.” He extended a hand towards Peter's face, but stopped short when the kid flinched.

For a long moment they just stood, breaths held, waiting.

“I can take the subway back to Queens,” Peter finally said to the floor. “I understand if you don’t want me to come over anymore.”

There was utter resignation in his voice.

Yeah. That just wasn’t on.

Tony was overcome by a fresh surge of resolve. He squared his shoulders. “Get changed into something more comfortable, okay? There’s a plate of sandwiches on your dresser. I want you to eat at least a couple—you’re running on empty. And then,” he said, this time not letting the flinch stop him when he reached out to brush the damp bangs from Peter’s forehead, “as soon as you’re ready, you’re going to meet me in the living room. I think you and I are due for a talk, kiddo.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains (non-graphic) discussions of previous childhood sexual abuse

“If I may,” FRIDAY said, “this would be an opportune moment to practice the breathing techniques Miss Potts has requested you try. Studies on resonance frequency breathing have indicated it reduces heart rate variability and relieves the sympathetic nervous system during times of—”

“Yeah, thank you FRI, much appreciated and all,” Tony said, continuing to pace in front of the sectional. “But if I wanted a yoga instructor, I’d hit up the Dalai Lama and see if he’s taking any new clients or could otherwise Venmo a little inner peace. I wouldn’t flock to a three star wikiHow article so some thirty-something freelance writer who probably lives in their mom’s basement and eats shredded cheese from the bag can tell me how to _breathe_.”

“It’s just that you seem a bit anxious, Boss.”

“I’m not _anxious_ ,” Tony said, but the words were undermined by his jackhammer pulse. He felt ridiculous: he’d been kidnapped by terrorists, battled Norse gods, helped defeat entire cosmic armies. One baby-faced, Bambi-eyed fifteen year old who spent his afternoons playing crossing guard for elderly churro ladies shouldn’t have him this nervous. But every minute that ticked by without the kid making an appearance was another added layer of trepidation. 

“Alcohol-based products are most effective,” FRIDAY had told him half an hour earlier, as soon as he’d stepped out of Peter’s bedroom, closing the door behind him. “You currently have both hand sanitizer and isopropyl alcohol on site. Miss Potts also has makeup wipes in your ensuite.”

Tony’s fingers clamped around the doorknob. He shot down her offered options in a low voice. “Not going to happen. He nearly scrubbed off a layer of his skin.” 

“Oil-based would be your next best bet, Boss.”

Same as with making Peter lunch, preparing for the task at hand was a welcomed distraction—a balm for his itching need to _do something, fix this_. He felt useful as he dug through the kitchen cupboards for a bottle of olive oil. Poured water into a kettle and set it to boil on the stove. Pulled a well-used icepack from the freezer. Gathered a small stack of washcloths and hand towels from the linen closet. Ransacked the sizeable array of first aid supplies until he found the Arnica cream (which was, admittedly, less for his fast-healing patient and more for Tony’s own peace of mind). 

Now though, with nothing left to do but wait and worry, the restlessness was quickly becoming excrutiating.

Tony paused yet again in front of the coffee table, scrutinizing the assortment spread across it. He bent down and pushed the steaming bowl of water a few inches to the right. Straightened. Shook his head and pushed it back to the left. “You sure I’m not missing anything?” 

“Not unless an item has spontaneously disappeared since you asked me one hundred forty four seconds ago,” FRI said. “Though I assure you that scenario is exceedingly unlikely.”

Tony glared at the ceiling. “Alright saucebox, no need to go all Geoffrey Butler on me. You’re not getting paid overtime.” 

“I was under the impression I wasn’t getting paid at all.” 

“Not with that attitude you’re not. Shape up or ship out, sugarplum. I’m not above donating you to a community college.” 

“That a promise, Boss? A change of scenery sounds quite nice.” 

Tony snorted. The familiar banter was enough to ease a sliver of his panic—at the impending conversation, the idea of how monumentally he might screw everything up—and he only realized he’d been grinding his teeth when his jaw started to slacken. He brought a hand up to cover his eyes. Inhaled. Tried to pump the brakes on his racing thoughts.

But any incremental progress he managed to achieve was short-lived. As soon as he took his hand away and caught sight of Peter standing beneath the stairs, hovering in the gap between hallway entrance and living area, all illusions of composure shattered.

Tony was at least pleased to see the kid had followed his instructions and changed into more comfortable clothes—a pair of pajama pants and a graphic tee giving the sage advice to ‘Never Trust an Atom. They Make Up Everything.’ But the fact Peter found it necessary to put the hat back on, even when it was only the two of them, caused whatever belt was apparently wrapped around Tony’s chest to tighten. It tightened even further at the kid’s torn expression: Peter looked like he was trying very hard to convince himself not to make a run for it.

Tony hauled his lips into a weak smile. “Pete. Hey.”

Peter glanced over his shoulder as though to double check Tony wasn’t addressing another Pete behind him. He was looking towards his bedroom, Tony realized. An imitation of earlier, when he seemed to map an escape route in the bathroom. An escape from where Tony had cornered him. Because Tony was a threat in this situation.

The belt cinched another notch.

He tried to relax his muscles. To look as nonthreatening as he could. “Can you maybe come over here for a few minutes, bud?”

Peter wavered, casting another glance behind him, before he started to shuffle forward with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner being led to their execution. As soon as he rounded the sectional though, coffee table brought within his line of sight, he stopped in his tracks. His swallow was audible as he took in the supplies clearly laid out for him. “You don’t have to, Mr. Stark.” 

“I could’ve sworn we’ve gone over this,” Tony said, keeping his tone light so Peter wouldn’t mistake it for an actual reproach. “I don’t do anything unless I want to.” 

The kid’s hands clenched around the loose fleece of his pants. “I can take care of it later.” He swallowed again. “On my own.”

“It’s alright kiddo,” Tony reassured, giving an encouraging wave of his fingers. “We’ll get it done and over with so we can cross it off our to-do list, yeah?”

Peter’s eyes fell to the carpet. “I want to do it myself.”

The image that barreled into Tony’s mind—Peter, alone, fighting tears as he scrubbed at his forehead so viciously he almost made himself bleed while Tony chatted to May in the kitchen, oblivious—made his plastered smile fade. “Yeah,” Tony said. “That’s going to be a solid nay from me. And considering I’m the only one here old enough to vote, I’m pretty sure I win by default. Tough luck, piccino.” 

Peter didn’t move. His lips were pale, pressed into a thin line.

“Hey,” Tony said, softening his voice. He tilted his head in a futile attempt to get Peter to meet his gaze. “It’s just us, bud. No one else is going to see.”

“I don’t want you to look at it.” 

“It’s _me_ , Pete.” 

The needless reminder was meant to be comforting, but Peter tensed. “You don’t get it,” he said stiffly. “It’s _worse_ because it’s you.”

That caught Tony off guard. Hurt flashed across his face before he was able to stop it. “Okay,” he said, using every particle of strength he had to sound unaffected. “Can you help me understand why?”

The kid was silent for several long, agonizing moments. Tony was about to retract the question and try another approach when Peter finally mumbled, “You’re Tony Stark. And Iron Man. You’re always on the news for…for being a badass and saving people and stuff, and on magazine covers for being...as the sexiest man alive or whatever. You drive all these crazy sports cars and have, like, supermodels hanging off your arms whenever you go out. Every guy out there would kill to be you, you know? You’re…Webster’s could put your picture next to ‘masculine’ in the dictionary and nobody would even notice. And I’m just…I’m just…” Peter stared down, watching as his socked foot drew patterns across the carpet. “I don’t know. An embarrassment, I guess.”

The words were a trigger, the memory hitting Tony with all the force of a swinging two by four. It was one he’d been replaying on a daily basis as of late, but the novelty had yet to wear off: another wave of shame crashed into him as he thought of Peter’s first weekend sleeping over at the Compound—back when Tony was still living there fulltime, throwing all his energy into Rhodey’s recovery so he would be too busy to think about the Accords or the Avengers or Steve Backstabbing-Holier-Than-Thou Rogers. They’d been in the training room, Rhodey and Peter and him—Tony teaching the kid how to hold a proper stance, Rhodey working on his PT. When his friend’s grunts of effort had begun turning into grunts of pain, Tony made the kid take five while he acted as cheerleader. 

“Just think about that sweet revamped War Machine suit you’re gonna get,” he’d said as Rhodey pushed himself through one last knee extension. “Sitting in the lab as we speak.”

“How about you build me something I can pilot remotely instead?” With a final grunt, Rhodey let his leg fall. He leaned back in exhaustion, wiping his brow. “That way I can keep saving your ass without all the hassle of leaving my armchair.”  
  
“Come on sour patch, where’s the fun in that? And please stop trying to pick fights in front of the children.” He waved a hand in Peter’s direction. The kid—still in his _I can’t believe I’m hanging out with Iron Man and War Machine this is the coolest day of my life!_ phase—was seated on a bench, gawking at his idols as they ping-ponged insults back and forth. “We’re supposed to be presenting a united front here.”  
  
Rhodey ignored him. “Unmanned vehicles are the way of the future, anyway. Might as well embrace it.” 

“Speaking of being unmanned…” Tony said, never one to miss an opportunity.

His friend sighed. “You really haven’t had any downtime over the last few decades to come up with some new material?” 

“If you ever need a pick-me-up kid—” 

Peter startled when Tony turned to address him directly.

“—get Rhodey to tell you about the time he guessed wrong during spring break. 1987, wasn’t it?” 

“Don’t listen to this idiot, Peter.” Rhodey shot the wide-eyed kid a kind glance. “He doesn’t respect anyone unless they’re a self-aggrandizing womanizer like him.”

“That lovely young lady you woke up with. What was his name? Ryan? Romano?”

“Cut it out, Tones,” but Rhodey’s amusement was obvious. “One of these days, someone might actually believe you.” 

“Richard? There was definitely a Dick in there somewhere, judging by how you were walking the next morning.” 

“For God’s sake, Tony. _Young. Ears_.”

Tony turned back to the bench, chalking Peter’s flustered expression up to what, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the most age-appropriate bit for a fourteen year old who traipsed around in a onesie fighting petty criminals until his seven o’clock bedtime. “I really don’t know why I keep Ms. Rhodes here around,” Tony said, winking at Peter as he brought things to a swift end. “The embarrassment isn’t worth it.” 

The kid’s chortle was forced, and Tony almost felt bad for making him uncomfortable. But then Peter was stammering something about the restroom and hightailing it away, Rhodey already moving on to his next exercise. And Tony, having recycled the joke so many times over the years, didn’t think any more of it. He didn’t think about the court documents from Westcott’s trial. He didn’t think that maybe the glimmer he saw in Peter’s eyes as the kid fled was from anything other than mirth. Like everything else to do with Peter, he just assumed. 

It had been an attempt to lighten the mood. Give Rhodey a moment of reprieve from the pain. Get the jumpy, star-struck Parker kid to unwind a little. Now though, with Peter standing in front of him, head hung, wringing his pajama pants, shoulders drooped in defeat, Tony’s stomach knotted with guilt. He stared at Peter’s hat, the air steadily sucked from his lungs as he thought of how it was covering a slur no different than the slurs that, in 2001, Tony was still using as casual jabs—whenever he caught Happy watching period dramas ( _Cool it with the homo, Hap. Geez, some guys have no self-respect._ ) or when he was elbowing Rhodey towards the redhead at the bar, trying to convince him to buy her a drink ( _Man up, Colonel Twink. Don’t want your army buddies getting the wrong idea._ )—unaware that somewhere in Queens, Mary and Richard Parker were buying baby clothes and painting their nursery and counting down to August 10th, one of the best fucking days of Tony’s life, and he probably wasted it in bed with a supermodel whose name he couldn’t remember because that’s what badass, sports-car-driving, masculine-defining womanizers like Tony Stark do. 

Pain exploded like shrapnel through his chest. This world—the world that continued to kick Peter to the ground time and time and time again, that took his kindness, and bravery, and goodness, and everything that made him _Peter_ and threw it all away, filling the empty space left over with _faggot_ as though nothing else ever mattered—this world was Tony’s own creation.  
  
The shame was astronomical. 

“You’re not an embarrassment, Peter,” Tony said quietly. “You’re my kid.”

Peter didn’t look up. After a moment, he gave a lackluster shrug.  
  
Tony closed the distance between them with slow steps. He hooked a tentative finger under Peter’s chin. Lifted. 

Peter’s bloodshot eyes met his. 

“You’re my kid,” Tony said. “And I’m so, so goddamn proud of you, alright? Christ, Pete, it shouldn’t even be possible to be this proud. I’m probably breaking some law of physics over here just being in the same room, but there you have it. There’s not a single part of you I’m not proud of, or that I’d want you to change, or that I could ever, in a million years be embarrassed by. Just. I love you, kid. All of you. Whole shebang. No exceptions.”

Peter’s eyes were starting to pool, but Tony forged on. He brought the hand on Peter’s face around to cradle the back of his neck, then raised the other and slid off the hat.

More, predictable pain pierced his chest at the sight of the word. A renewed thirst to eviscerate the scumbag who put it there. An irrational rage at the sloppiness of the handwriting, the idea they couldn’t even be bothered to use their best penmanship when they were pinning Tony’s kid to the floor and scribbling a label on him like Peter had all the worth of a fucking cardboard box. But unlike in the office, Tony was prepared: he didn’t let his expression falter as he tossed the hat aside and ran a weightless thumb over the sore-looking skin of Peter’s forehead.

“Not one thing I’m embarrassed by,” he murmured, “or that could ever make me love you any less. Capisce?” 

That was the breaking point: two lines of tears streaked down Peter’s cheeks, and he quickly pulled away from Tony’s grip, swiping at them and sniffling. He cleared his throat. Coughed an awkward laugh. “Not even my pop-culture references?”

Tony gave an indulgent smile. “Well. Maybe you could let up on those just a smidge. And for the record, ’80s movies are not ‘really old,’ thank you very much.”

The second cough of laughter sounded wet. Peter dug the heel of his palm into his good eye.

“Pete?” Tony asked, smile fading. “Please let me try and fix this, honey. Please.”

A pause. Then Peter nodded.

Tony moved behind him, clasping his shoulders and kneading as he steered the kid towards the sectional. “Come on. Let’s see about getting you cleaned up a bit, yeah?”

By some small miracle, it took only minimal coaxing to get Peter lying down, head resting on the throw pillow in Tony’s lap. He remained unusually complaisant as Tony fussed over his black eye, not saying anything except to confirm he wasn’t having any vision problems, and even reaching up—unprompted—to hold the washcloth-swathed icepack in place when Tony set it over the injury. Tony squeezed his hand in reward before grabbing the Arnica, hoping the good behavior would continue.

Amazingly, it did. Where Tony couldn’t normally get a word in edgewise for all the kid’s complaining about being subjected to even the most minor medical treatment, Peter was quiet as he smeared cream into the bruises on his cheeks, his jaw, his arms. He was quiet when Tony moved to his wrists—circled with identical bands of purple from the force with which his attackers had clamped down—even though Tony knew he could hear the man’s blood pressure spike, heart pumping fast in anger. He was quiet when Tony tugged his shirt up with a soft “Almost done, kiddo,” coating the bruises across his chest and ribcage and belly. 

The Arnica was abandoned, exchanged for a washcloth that Tony dipped into the bowl of olive oil. He leaned back and brushed his fingers through Peter’s bangs, holding them out of the way with his free hand. Gentle as he could, he brought the cloth down and tested it on the _F_. 

The ink began to lift almost immediately. He allowed himself a single, relieved sigh, before getting to work.

Tony rubbed at the marker with tiny, methodical circles, the knot in his stomach loosening with every fragment of thick line that was erased. Peter continued to endure the ministrations with uncharacteristic reserve, and Tony, sensing the kid’s need to have a moment to himself, let the silence hang.

By the time the first letter was finally gone, black smudges covered nearly every square inch of the white cotton. Tony tossed the ruined washcloth aside. He pulled a fresh one from the stack and soaked it in the hot water. Wrung it out. Sponged it across Peter's forehead. Dried him with a hand towel once the film of oil was sopped up.

Tony traced his fingers across where the _F_ had been. Satisfied no marker had been missed, he went to repeat the process for the _A_.

It wasn’t until the first half of the word was gone, nothing but an innocuous _GOT_ left in its wake, that Tony spoke.

“Pete?”

The kid’s uncovered eye had drifted shut at some point, but he blinked at the sound of his name, slow and owlish.

“Can we maybe talk about a few things?”

Peter’s reluctance was unmistakable when he asked, “Like what?” 

“Like what happened at school today, for starters.”

“I’ll pay for your sweatshirt.”

The declaration was so unexpected—so ridiculously, quintessentially _Peter_ —it startled an amused huff out of Tony. 

But then he remembered what had happened to the hoodie in the first place—remembered the washcloth in his hand, the marker it was rubbing at, the phone conversation with May and consequent revelation of a “usual name-calling,” yet another thing about his kid he should have just _known_ without needing to be told ( _Does this grant, like, got money involved?_ )—and the amusement dissipated. 

“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have kept it.” Pete was almost begging. Like he needed forgiveness. Like he thought Tony should be angry at _him_. “I didn’t mean for it to get ruined. I really will pay you back.”

“I don’t care about the sweatshirt,” Tony said. “It was under warranty, alright? Complete coverage. Got a written contract and everything. And I definitely don’t care about you wearing it. Heck, steal my clothes as often as you like, kid. God knows it’d be a step up from all these terrible science puns you love to parade around in, and that’s taking into consideration how everything in my closet would fit you about as well as a rain poncho. I mean honestly, Pete. ‘Atoms make up everything’? I hope someone got fired for that. Lordy.”

It did the trick: Peter’s smile was faint, but there. “Mr. Stark, you bought me this shirt.”

“Yeah, well. It’s better than that electron monstrosity. I've gotta wean you off somehow, after all. Next step is Armani.” The smile widened half a millimeter, and Tony, reluctant to rush on from the brief sliver of normalcy, let another brief silence fall over them before forcing himself to push forward. “Think you’d be up to filling in a few gaps for me?” 

Peter went to chew on his bottom lip, wincing and pulling back when his teeth made contact with the split. “I guess.”

“Why did you go to the locker room?”

There was a crunching noise as Peter's grip tightened around the icepack. “I was supposed to meet someone there.”

Tony gave it a minute, but Pete didn’t continue. “Hey,” he said, pausing to lift the washcloth out of the way. He stroked his thumb across Peter’s hairline. “This one’s a Code Vegas, alright? Full lockdown. Nothing you tell me ever makes it out of this room.”

Peter hesitated. “You won’t even tell May?”

“I won’t even tell your terrifying aunt,” Tony promised.

There was another moment of hesitation. When he spoke the words were timid, as if he was unsure whether or not he was allowed to say them. “There’s…there’s this boy I kind of like.” 

The gut reaction was still there, despite all Tony’s best efforts to reason it away—the vague impression of a potential threat, the urge to stand in front of his kid and glare down anyone who tried to look at Peter in any way other than strictly platonic—but Tony hurried to shove it from his mind. He’d deal with his issues on his own time. The last thing he needed was for Peter to see something in his expression and clam up just as he was finally starting to confide in Tony. Or, far worse, misinterpret. 

“Yeah?” Tony asked, infusing his voice with as much encouragement as he could. “Anything serious?”

“No,” the kid whispered. He fidgeted with the icepack and shifted closer to Tony, trying to hide himself from the undivided attention. Tony went back to the marker. “We’ve only been, like, texting and stuff. But I thought…I thought he might like me too? At least a little? I don’t know.”

 _No different than MJ._ “That’s great, Pete.” 

Peter took several seconds to respond. “He messaged me last night and asked if we could meet up today. In private. I thought he wanted to talk about…about us or something.” Peter let out a quivering breath. “I guess I was being stupid. None of it turned out to be real.”

Tony’s stomach began to sink as a horrible, appallingly cruel scenario took shape in his mind. _Christ, kid. Please don’t say what I think you’re about to._

“I was so _stupid_. I knew something was wrong before I even got there, because of my…my Spidey sense,” Pete said, cheeks tinting pink. “I assumed he was in trouble. But he—” 

Peter cut off with a sharp inhale. He wrapped his free arm around his waist and bent his legs, knees in the air. The closest he could get to curling up when his head was being held down in Tony’s lap. 

Tony swept his thumb across Peter’s hair again. 

“Do you remember when I told you about Charlie? How he gets bullied?”

Any hope Tony had simmered away. “Pete?” he asked, somber, already knowing what the answer would be. “Was the boy Charlie?”

Another quivering breath. “I guess he thought if he told them about me they wouldn’t go after him so much,” Peter said. His uncovered eye was shining. “I shouldn’t have made it so obvious I liked him. I should’ve known from the start he wasn’t interested. I just…sometimes it gets lonely. With all the secrets. And I guess I just didn’t want to feel alone for once.”

Tony swallowed. “Pete…buddy…” 

Peter wasn’t looking at him, but he must have heard the devastation in his voice, because he said, “It’s okay, Mr. Stark,” trying to comfort _Tony_. “It was only a crush. It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not okay," Tony argued. “None of this is even remotely okay.”

Peter didn’t say anything for a moment. “He was standing by the lockers. When I got down there. He apologized. He said they told him they’d back off if he helped. I just remember being confused, because nothing he was saying made any sense, but I could still feel something was wrong. And then they…they…” A single tear streaked down from Peter’s eye, and he quickly reached up to wipe it off. Despite the lingering wetness, no more fell.

Tony’s fingers clenched around the wascloth.

“I didn’t mean to hurt them.” Peter’s words were entreating, his gaze imploring as he turned it to Tony. Like he thought Tony might not believe him. “I wasn’t planning on fighting them at all.” And, in the tiniest of voices, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Tony said immediately. “You don't get to apologize for this. Not this, Peter."

He had known it was coming—the ridiculous, wholly unnecessary plea for forgiveness for daring to defend himself—but seeing the misplaced shame on Pete’s face was still painful. They’d had this conversation before, every time Peter accidentally warped a power tool when he got carried away in a task, or broke a mugger’s jaw because he put just an ounce too much force behind his punch. It was always the same routine: Tony insisting everything was fine, accidents happened, while Pete drowned him out with so many apologies anyone who overheard them would’ve thought he’d hijacked a car and run over a Dicken’s orphan during his unlicensed joyride.

While Peter made it clear from the beginning he was self-conscious of his powers, Tony didn’t learn the true extent until one day in the garage, when the kid, caught in a fit of excitement at getting to work on the Saleen, propped back the hood without considering the energy he was putting into the motion. The metal hinges had snapped, sending it crashing through the windshield. They were still in the earlier stages of their relationship, back before Tony had grown more comfortable dealing with Peter’s tactile and emotional needs; he’d hovered, awkward and useless, as the kid fell into a panic attack, at a loss for how to make things better when the panted apologies turned into other things. _Freak. Lab experiment. Not even human_. That was when Tony first realized: Peter was scared of himself. Of the harm he could do in even a split second of carelessness.

Tony ached. Pete was just a kid—he shouldn’t have to bear the burden of such responsibility. Of such intense self-hate.

“I didn’t want to fight them,” Peter said again. He wasn’t looking at Tony anymore, instead blinking up at the distant ceiling.

“I know.” Tony pulled the washcloth from the water bowl and wrung it out, dabbing oil from Peter’s forehead. Only the final letter was left. “I know, kiddo. It wasn’t your fault, okay?” 

“I was going to wait them out. Let them have their fun with the cocksucker—”

An automatic noise of protest burst from Tony’s throat, more pain at how Peter seemed to accept the word unquestionably, but the kid was already plowing on.

“—until they got bored and left. But then they started trying to take my clothes off.” Peter blinked more rapidly. “I know they weren’t going to do anything. I know they only wanted to humiliate me. Take all my stuff with them and leave me there. But… I… Skip…” He made a helpless gesture.  
  
And Christ, if that didn’t feel like his heart being put through a blender. “You’re okay, buddy. You don’t need to explain.”

“I panicked,” Peter said, fainter than before. “I didn’t mean to push them so hard. I know I shouldn’t have lost control. I really am sorry.”

“God,” Tony sighed. “No. If you’re being attacked, you defend yourself. Non-optional. You did exactly what you should’ve done.”

“They had to bring an ambulance.”

Tony bit back the response on his tongue, the same one he’d had in Morita’s office: _Good_. “That’s not on you. We’re not playing the Pin the Blame on Peter Parker game with this, alright? I don’t care about whatever high score you’re trying to set. They decide to physically assault someone, they get to deal with the consequences of their actions.”

Pete looked upset. “I don’t want them to get in trouble because of me.”

Tony tamped down another hasty, extremely colorful response. Hoping FRI wouldn’t rat him out to Pepper later, he drew in a deep lungful of air, counting to five before releasing it slowly. “Okay,” he said, measured and restrained. Even while fury coursed through him, he kept his touch gentle as he worked on erasing the last of the marker. “We’ll do this your way. How exactly is their getting punished in any way your fault?”

“Because I deserved it.” 

Tony’s hands stilled for a half second before he forced himself to keep moving. “Why did you deserve it?”

Silence. Then, with even more shame than earlier, “Because I’m sick.”

Tony’s hands stilled again. He took another breath, closing his eyes while he counted the seconds and exhaled. When he opened them, the room seemed to tilt for a moment before righting itself.

 _You did this_ , his mind snarled at him. As if he could have ever forgotten. _This is your legacy, Stark._

“You’re not sick,” Tony said, more or less managing to sound like he hadn’t just been kicked in the gut with a steel-toed boot. A spark of pain shot up his arm as he finished wiping away the last black spot left of the _T_. “Look. I know I’ve said some really garbage things in the past. And we’re going to be getting to that. God, you’ll probably want to rip your ears off with all the apologizing I’ll be doing for the rest of time. But for right now, just… I know I don’t have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to asking you to listen to me, considering everything I’ve said. I know that. But. Pete. You gotta believe me when I tell you there’s nothing wrong with being gay, alright? Please just trust me on that, bud. _Please_.”

The shame didn’t leave Peter’s face. “I know there’s nothing wrong with it normally. It’s different for me though.”  
  
This _kid_. “Pete—”

“It’s true.” Peter’s words were whispered, as if he were confessing some egregious, inexcusable sin. “I never used to like boys. Not like…like that. Not until after Skip.” 

Tony’s mouth went dry. “That doesn’t make you sick,” he said, words staggering beneath their own weight. He sponged the oil from Peter’s forehead one final time, desperate to think of some way to _fix this_ but coming up empty because he was always, _always_ failing his kid. Useless to offer anything better, it was all Tony could do to repeat, "You're not sick. You didn't deserve this. I'll tell you that a thousand times over if you need." 

Peter stared up at him as he dried the kid off, searching Tony's face with almost surgical intensity. He must have found whatever he’d been looking for, because finally Peter said, still just a whisper, “Sometimes I have nightmares about him.” He turned his gaze away. “Skip. And when I wake up it’ll be…I…” Blood pooled into his cheeks. “You know.” 

Tony took the half-melted icepack from his hand, setting it on the coffee table. The kid’s freed arm immediately went to join the other around his waist. Tony cupped the cold side of Peter’s face, thinking about that night at the Compound. Peter’s sleep terror. Being startled awake by his screams. Watching horror and humiliation engulf the kid as soon as he came to and realized he’d not only wet the bed, but his childhood hero had been there to witness it. 

“I know it probably doesn’t feel like it,” Tony murmured, grazing his fingers over Peter’s forehead. Aside from the lingering greasiness that would need to be washed off with soap later, and the state of his skin—still red and raw—it was impossible to tell that anything had ever been there. “But there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, alright? It happens to a lot of kids who are dealing with trauma. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”

“Not that,” Peter said. His voice was strained. “The other thing.”

 _The other thing._ Tony racked his mind, but drew a blank. “I’m sorry, Pete,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t…” But then the missing piece slotted into place. “Oh. Oh, honey.”

Peter flushed a few shades darker before rolling onto his side, hiding his face against Tony’s abdomen. Tony cradled the back of his head without thought. “You see?” Peter asked, muffled and breaking. “I’m sick. I _enjoyed_ it.”

“You didn’t enjoy it,” Tony said, the belt back around his chest, constricting his lungs, threatening to burst his heart. The hand that wasn’t buried in curls began rubbing circles into Peter’s back. “Sometimes our bodies respond to things in ways that don’t make sense, even when we’re scared or hurt. Especially when we’re fifteen.”

“But it keeps happening. I shouldn’t…it’s disgusting.” The dam Peter had been holding up crumbled. Tears began to soak through Tony’s sweater. “I just want it to stop.”

“I know, honey,” Tony said, helpless, belt cinched tighter and tighter and tighter. His hand remained steady on Peter’s back, but his mind scrambled for some way to fix this, some comforting thing to say. But just like in the office, he had nothing. No way to stop what was a normal part of growing up. No tidy, pacifying consolation to negate the painful truth: that orgasm and rape weren’t mutually exclusive. That Peter’s body was going to do whatever it wanted, regardless of his fear and hurt and disgust.

“And it’s not just the dreams either.” There was a horrible, congested wheezing, as if Peter had fallen from a great height and had the air knocked out of him. “It’s everything. I never liked boys until after Skip. I think he…he left something inside me when he... Sickness. I think he made me sick like him.”

Tony’s own eyes were stinging. “Pete. No, that’s not… You’re not sick. You’re not sick, and you don’t like boys because of him.” He took a quick breath, thinking about all the articles saved to his server, all the personal narratives and survey findings and medical journals he’d spent hours poring through. “Look. A lot of people know they’re gay from the very beginning. But that’s not everyone, bud. Not by a long shot. Sometimes kids don’t realize until their hormones start to change.” He wet his lips. “Usually right around eleven.” 

The significance of the age went unspoken: eleven, when, following seventeen months of threats and lies and abuse, Peter couldn't bear another day of it; eleven, when Ben Parker broke the jaw of his nephew’s babysitter and spent the night in a jail cell, released the next morning without charge; eleven, when the world finally, _finally_ acknowledged Westcott as being the monster that for so long only Peter knew him to be.

“You finding out when you did?” Tony continued gently. “It was just bad timing, Pete. It was just bad timing.”

There was another wheeze, this one fainter than the last. Peter pressed his face closer, Tony’s sweater growing damper. “I don’t want to be like him.”

_I just wanted to be like you._

_Badass. Masculine._ Straight.

“You’re not like him,” Tony said, gutted. “Not even a little.” 

Shivers were beginning to rack through Peter’s slim frame. He grabbed the folded throw draped over the back of the sectional to cover him.

“Then why does it feel like it?” the kid asked. The words were barely audible, buried beneath exhaustion—exhaustion that could have only resulted from years of secrets, of loneliness, of Pete asking himself that very question over and over and over again in the privacy of his own mind, too afraid to voice it aloud, no one there to listen even if he did. “Why does it feel like I’m turning into him?”

Tony ran his hand down the kid’s side, smoothing the blanket, before bringing it up to massage the nape of Peter’s neck. “You’re not anything like him,” he promised, matching Peter’s volume, afraid that anything louder might splinter the tenuous bubble of honesty their conversation had become. “He didn’t hurt you because he was gay. He hurt you because he was a predator. What he did? That wasn’t about attraction. That wasn’t about connecting with someone, or wanting to be in a relationship. That wasn’t love, Pete. It was power and fear. Nothing more.” Tony traced his thumb around the delicate shell of Peter’s ear. “It's okay if you don't believe me, but I need you to hear me out for a sec. Can you do that?”

A moment ticked by. Two. Then, there it was: a miniscule nod.

“One day you’re probably going to meet someone. Maybe in a week. Maybe a month. Maybe twenty years from now. Maybe you’ll have to go through a few more Charlies to get to him. But I’ve got a hunch the right person is out there waiting for you. And…God, kid. Please don’t ever give up on finding him, no matter how long it takes. Because you deserve to know what it’s like to fall in love. Really, really fall in love. You deserve to know that kind of happiness. You deserve to know how full your life can be once that right person comes into it. Just. Please don’t let a monster poison you into thinking you can’t have that before you even get the chance. Please don’t give up before you’ve even met him.”

Peter was very, very still. Another moment. Two. Finally, “How do you know? That someone’s out there.”

“Because I found Pepper, kid. And if some idiot in a tin can is able to pull it off, there’s not a doubt in my mind Peter Parker can, too.”

* * *

“Tony?”

It was later in the evening. Outside, the sky was a dark purple, only the last vestiges of sunlight clinging to the distant horizon. Windows across Manhattan were flickering to life—glowing yellow squares scattered across the shadowed city like fireflies at dusk. Inside, the penthouse was equally dim. Empty plates and pizza boxes were illuminated by the TV as it played _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ —per Peter’s shy request, who didn’t seem to have nearly as much of an issue suspending his disbelief over the movie’s very dubious scientific merit as Tony did.

He glanced down at the kid who was currently sprawled out on top of him, head resting on Tony’s chest. 

Peter’s eyes didn’t stray from the TV. “How long have you known?” 

Tony had been expecting the question, but hearing it nonetheless made his stomach capsize, not unlike when he used to race Happy down California desert roads, whipping around curves at breakneck speeds. He took a breath, praying to no particular deity that whatever fragile trust he’d gained from Peter in the past several hours wasn’t about to implode. “Since you made those Google searches.” Then, a cautious, landmine step, “FRI’s programmed to flag anything that might mean you’re in danger.”

A few seconds passed as Peter processed the information. “Oh.” 

“I’m so sorry, Pete.” The apology was fueled by a guilt that had been gnawing at Tony ever since he’d stumbled headfirst into the revelation. “It should’ve been your choice to tell me or not. That one’s on me.”

After another few seconds, Peter quietly said, “It’s okay. I think I’m kind of glad you know.”

Something akin to hope burgeoned beneath Tony’s sternum. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It feels…it kind of feels less lonely now.” He paused, then hastened to add, “I don’t think I want to tell Aunt May though. Not yet.”

“That’s okay,” Tony said, brushing his fingers through Peter’s hair. “Nothing happens before you’re ready. And when you decide you are, I’ll be right there behind you.”

Peter’s gaze remained resolutely focused on the screen, but it was obvious his mind was elsewhere. “Did you—” He stopped. Hesitated. When he spoke again, his voice sounded uncertain. “Did you mean what you said earlier? About being proud and stuff?”   
  
Tony’s lips quirked into a smile. “Every word.”

“Do you think Ben would be proud too?” the kid whispered. “Even…even if he knew?”

Tony drew him closer. Pressed his nose into Peter’s curls. “God, Pete,” he breathed. “Yes. I know for a fact he’d be proud.”

And with that, too, he meant every word.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so incredibly much to everyone who's taken the time to leave kudos and comments. Your support means the world to me <3


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